> So many people don't get that experience. This is very true. The misuse of the "premature optimization" mantra and the thought that valuable programmer time

> So many people don't get that experience. This is very true. The misuse of the "premature optimization" mantra and the thought that valuable programmer time should never be spent on performance have done a disservice to a generation or two of developers. To the point that so many developers don't even believe performance has any significance and the cloud just magically makes it fast. Spending a week optimizing some function to shave off a few seconds may be totally worth it, just depends how often it runs. If it is a code path being used by millions of people, it can quickly become very valuable. Cost is another factor. Sure you might be able to effortlessly spin up dozens or hundreds more instances on demand to handle the load because the code is so slow one instance can barely handle a few dozen requests per second, but you're paying for that. Make an instance capable of handling a few thousand rps and suddenly you've save very real money. And battery life on all portable devices also benefits from more efficient CPU usage.