I think you may have been downvoted because the article just explains: step 0 should always be profiling and then deciding what you need, either more hardware o

I think you may have been downvoted because the article just explains: step 0 should always be profiling and then deciding what you need, either more hardware or better code. I once spent weeks optimizing code on a "best in the world" (for my branch of work) open source project because it made the assumption that it'd run on SSDs, hence it made zillions of small reads from the disk. There were two approaches to solve that: buy an SSD, or refactor the code. But it was through profiling that I found the answer (and in my economic situation at the time, buying an SSD was definitely not viable, much less a step 0!).