Nope, programmer time is indeed not free. But so many of the people reading HN are trying to "go wide" and appeal to very large audiences. Quite often they are

Nope, programmer time is indeed not free. But so many of the people reading HN are trying to "go wide" and appeal to very large audiences. Quite often they are services offered in some sort of freemium model where you hope that the user comes to love and depend on your service. That depends on a positive experience. You're thinking like your existing users will have to "pay more" to get a faster experience, when in reality you are losing money because of the would-be users who give up and go away. A few days spent reducing load times and ironing out delays can make an application feel fast and increase conversion rates. Plus it makes everyone feel good about using the product. Delay==Frustration. Now if you're lucky, perhaps your startup is in a situation like Adobe where they pretty much have a lock on high-end graphics editing and can say, "You will wait for our splash screen because you have no other choice and we're kinda busy making money here so just wait." That kind of thinking will get your users mad, but since you were lucky. But they'll remember, and have no qualms about bailing out the first chance they get.