Maybe machines are too fast today. Back in the 70s, even departmental computers were slow. This might have forced better engineering choices onto the product

Maybe machines are too fast today. Back in the 70s, even departmental computers were slow. This might have forced better engineering choices onto the product designers. The difference between and O( n log n) algorithm and an O(n^2) one could have made the difference between a decent product and a totally unusable one. Nowadays, toy examples can seem to work fine even when the products have really terrible implementations.