No piece of code is written perfectly the first time. A software application (web or otherwise) tends to be a bundle of validations and compromises when written

No piece of code is written perfectly the first time. A software application (web or otherwise) tends to be a bundle of validations and compromises when written under the constraints of budgets, deadlines, and priorities. There are many scenarios where a page used 20 times a day takes 8 seconds to load. For example, an admin dashboard page that shows some statistics on some aspect of customer usage written early on in a startup's life might only need to be looked at once a month by one of the founders (since it app has little traction, they have bigger things to worry about than seeing statistics from an n of 3). So, it's hammered out with inefficient queries, improper indexes, etc. (after all, we don't even have a clear enough view of actual usage yet to know what indexes or queries we should really be doing). Time goes on, the startup picks up traction, and before you know it, it's April 15, 2016, and the application handles millions interactions a week across its users. Someone on the support team at some point in the near past realized that they should be looking at these usage statistics to help drive improvements to the interface of the application, but the page now takes 8 seconds to load, because of all the data stored in that table, and because of the inefficient queries, improper indexes, etc. Due to the nature of the business and the aforementioned constraints of budgets, deadlines, and priorities, this person has spent the last month or so just dealing with the 8-second page load. But now, it's a priority, and someone can go in, look at the data that's actually there, and figure out the best way to refactor, optimize, and improve it. The point is, there are many scenarios where a web app can have a page checked 20 times a day that takes 8 seconds to load without assuming it's so badly written, and it certainly has a reason to exist (after all, it is partially the success of the app and value it provides to people that has caused this issue in the first place), and it doesn't need to die, it needs to adapt.