Comment by DrewADesign

Speed is an important usability consideration that gets disproportionate focus among many developers because it’s one of the few they can directly address with their standard professional toolkit. I think it’s a combo of a Hammer/Nail thing, and developers loving the challenge of code performance golf. (Though I never loved stuff like that, which is in part why I’m not a developer anymore.)

Figuring out the best way to present logically complex content, controls and state to users that don’t wrangle complexity for a living is difficult and specialized work, and for most users, it’s much more important than snappy click response.

Both of these things obviously exist on a spectrum and are certainly not mutually exclusive. (ILY McMaster-Carr) But projects rarely have enough time for either complete working features, or great thoughtful usability, and if you’re weighing the relative importance of these two factors, consider your audience, their goals, and their technical savvy before assuming good performance can make up for a suboptimal user workflow.

Thanks for enduring my indulgent rant.