If you consider “write code that doesn’t timeout or OOM on pathological inputs” to be writing performant code, sure. But as it is normally understood, writing

If you consider “write code that doesn’t timeout or OOM on pathological inputs” to be writing performant code, sure. But as it is normally understood, writing performant code is more about writing for fast performance with low time constant on everyday small inputs - something which algorithms and data structures interviews never touch on. Big O complexity is not directly related to performance, except for pathological inputs.