Comment by smolder
5 years ago
That belief is getting a bit outdated now that computing efficiency is hitting walls. Even when compute is cheaper than development, you're still making a morally suspect choice to pollute the environment over doing useful work if you spend $100k/yr on servers instead of $120k/yr on coding. When time and energy saved are insignificant compared to development expense is of course when you shouldn't be fussing with performance.
I don't think the anti-code-optimization dogma will go away, but good devs already know optimality is multi-dimensional and problem specific, and performance implications are always worth considering. Picking your battles is important, never fighting them nor knowing how is not the trick.
I agree 100% - the whole cheery lack of care around optimization to the point of it becoming 'wisdom' could only have happened in the artifice of the huge gains in computing power year on year.
Still, people applying optimizations that sacrifice maintainability for very little gain or increase bugs are still doing a disservice. People who understand data flow and design systems from the get-go that are optimal are where it's at.