Maybe it's just not a 'pit of performance'. What I mean is: perhaps the path of least resistance (and thus the cheaper way) does not lead to good performance b

Maybe it's just not a 'pit of performance'. What I mean is: perhaps the path of least resistance (and thus the cheaper way) does not lead to good performance by default. If only platforms and frameworks would make the fast way easy, and the slow way hard, it would be simpler to have faster software (not that it's easy to do). Now, if only all programs had performance tests on all commits (like browsers use speedometer 3, and track the trend over time, because they know it matters to users).