I suspect it’s the tools, frameworks, and the way the majority of software developers are taught. And also the computers we develop on.
The tools and frameworks add bloat. One some level we do this because the complexity of what we’re dealing with gets in the way of the problem we’re trying to solve. We add a layer of abstraction to hide the details and the solution becomes tractable.
We were supposed to be able to have our cake and eat it too but it turns out that a lot of these abstractions aren’t free in terms of performances.
The other factor is that a lot of developer tooling is designed for developer convenience. This is nice when you want to try out an idea. But the prototype often becomes the product. It’s nicer to work with, perhaps easier to add features to it, but that trade off is still there: performance.
And we’re taught to feel guilty or told we’re doing it wrong if we show any concern about performance. I’ve seen developers accused of the dreaded, “premature optimization,” sin for making suggestions in PRs to avoid code that would introduce poor performance. Or for suggesting anything performance related.
Lastly a lot of developers get to work on the latest and greatest hardware. They probably don’t spend any time or effort testing on older or low-tier hardware. This leads to designs that are “good enough” on these machines but will be slow as molasses on anything an average consumer would use. There’s a highly myopic view about platforms and is often not even considered.
The tools and frameworks add bloat. One some level we do this because the complexity of what we’re dealing with gets in the way of the problem we’re trying to solve. We add a layer of abstraction to hide the details and the solution becomes tractable.
We were supposed to be able to have our cake and eat it too but it turns out that a lot of these abstractions aren’t free in terms of performances.
The other factor is that a lot of developer tooling is designed for developer convenience. This is nice when you want to try out an idea. But the prototype often becomes the product. It’s nicer to work with, perhaps easier to add features to it, but that trade off is still there: performance.
And we’re taught to feel guilty or told we’re doing it wrong if we show any concern about performance. I’ve seen developers accused of the dreaded, “premature optimization,” sin for making suggestions in PRs to avoid code that would introduce poor performance. Or for suggesting anything performance related.
Lastly a lot of developers get to work on the latest and greatest hardware. They probably don’t spend any time or effort testing on older or low-tier hardware. This leads to designs that are “good enough” on these machines but will be slow as molasses on anything an average consumer would use. There’s a highly myopic view about platforms and is often not even considered.