> Why bother optimizing when the developer's time is more expensive than RAM and CPU power? The comparison should be between developer's time, and time spent (

> Why bother optimizing when the developer's time is more expensive than RAM and CPU power? The comparison should be between developer's time, and time spent (wasted) by all users combined. This depends on # of users, and how often they run the software. For a one-off, with a few dozen users running it occasionally, yes developer's time is expensive. For popular software with 100M+ or billions of daily users, developer time is practically irrelevant, and spending weeks/months to shave off 1/10th of a second for each user's run, would be a no-brainer. Most software sits somewhere in between. But... developer is paid by company not by end users. And company cares about other things than the interests of society-at-large. So it's mostly a case of bad incentives. Companies don't care about / aren't rewarded (enough, anyway) for saving end users' time. Open source developers might, but often they are not rewarded, period.