[patrick451]

Wirth's law doesn't bolster your point. He observed software is getting slower at a more rapid rate than computers are getting faster. Which is the whole point. We write increasingly slow, increasingly shitty code each year. I read and hear this attitude all the time that is basically "if you optimize something, you're bad at your job, only juniors try to do that". That's a culture problem.

It's frankly insulting you think Casey brainwashed me into this stance, when it's been obvious to me since long before I'd ever heard of him. IDGAF if code is clean or not. I care that Jira can display a new ticket in less than 15 seconds. I care that vscode actually keeps up with the characters I type. None of this software is remotely close to "runs good enough".

[TheMode]

What I am saying is that this is a natural phenomenon assuming no technical solution. People will tend to optimize their software based on the performance of their hardware.

I completely agree that many apps are horrendously slow, but given the alternative are hard pressed to arrive, I can only conclude they are considered "good enough" for our current tech level.

The difficulty involved in rewriting modern apps is one of the reason I would give that result in slow software. Can't really complain about the number of independent web browsers when you look at the spec. Ensuring the software we use is easily reimplementable by a few or one developer in a few days would go a long way improving performance.

Another reason would be the constant need to rewrite working code, to work on new platforms, to support some new trendy framework, etc. etc. You cannot properly optimize without some sort of stability.

[lmm]

Jira runs good enough to get idiot managers to pay for it, which is what it's designed for. And, yeah, microoptimising (or micropessimising, who knows since the changes are usually just made on vibes anyway) random bits of code that probably aren't even on any kind of hot path, while compromising maintainability, is something only juniors and people who are bad at their job do. It's easy to forget how common security flaws and outright crashes were in the "good old days" - frankly even today the industry is right to not prioritise performance given how much we struggle with correctness.

A lot of code is slow and could be faster, often much faster. This is more often because of people who thought they should bypass the abstractions and clean code and do something clever and low level than the opposite. Cases where you actually gain performance on a realistic-sized codebase by doing that are essentially nonexistent. The problem isn't too many abstractions, it's using the wrong algorithm or the wrong datastructure (which, sure, sometimes happens in a library or OS layer, but the answer to that isn't to bypass the abstraction, it's to fix it), and that's easier to spot and fix when the code is clean.