This is like saying that "so what if game runs at 15 FPS, it's still better than a worse game running at 60 FPS", this may hold true to certain kinds of games a

This is like saying that "so what if game runs at 15 FPS, it's still better than a worse game running at 60 FPS", this may hold true to certain kinds of games and be a huge deal breaker for others. E.g. Chess/board games vs. Counter-Strike/FPS games. In the end it boils down to user preference, user experience and individual weighing of those. Some people don't care if the image stutters a bit at times, and for other's it's a major annoyance. Thus simplifying this all to "performance doesn't matter, good ideas do" absolutism is nonsense. Besides some of us care about things like efficiency. I don't want to pay for a 1200 MHz processor when a 800 MHz would be equivalent given that programmer would have thought a bit more about how to implement things and not just ignorantly thought that "prematu... ALL optimization is root of all evil!", as it seems to be a common "wisdom" these days. That's nothing but sloppy culture, laziness and ignorance mixed together with a bit of cost analysis thrown in. User experience matters, and poor responsiveness is one of the most detrimental things when it comes to that in many applications.