Some programs are resource hogs. Most programs don't justify the effort to be pre-occupied with speed. I think it's fine for a developer to place runtime speed

Some programs are resource hogs. Most programs don't justify the effort to be pre-occupied with speed. I think it's fine for a developer to place runtime speed low on their priorities until they see an actual problem. Then, if it's hogging resources for something, they can do something about it. Thing is, however, for most tasks, this will not be necessary, and for many programs it will not be a problem, even if you use the slowest algorithms.