[rossant]

I fully agree. I loathe slow software. I hate bloat. I love fast software. As a developer, I'm completely, even irrationally, obsessed with speed, performance optimization, and profiling. I wish more developers felt the same way.

[Sesse__]

The sad part is that most employers don't care particularly about performance optimization skills (the economics don't work out, they can often just fix the problem cheaper with more hardware—and even if they can't, they mostly don't bear the cost themselves).

The fun part is that when your employer _does_ care about software optimization, few people are actually good at it and your skills are more exclusive :-)

[jimbokun]

This is true until they see the AWS bill after moving all their infrastructure there in a difficult to undo manner.

Suddenly they are very aware of the costs of inefficient software.

[coldblues]

Irrational how? What higher values does it undermine for you to make fast software?

[didgetmaster]

OP is probably referring to many engineering managers who think it is irrational to spend an hour in order to speed up a computing task that only shaves a few milliseconds off.

Even when that software is widely used so the few milliseconds add up to thousands of hours in collective time savings. 'We don't pay for user's time, only your's', is the attitude. Again 'irrational'.

[jonhohle]

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

[sota_pop]

We understand more than you’ll never know.