From: nunojsilva@invalid.invalid   
      
   On 2025-12-25, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
      
   > On Thu, 25 Dec 2025 21:05:10 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:   
   >   
   >> BTW my first programming job, in 1970, was on a machine with 16K   
   >> of memory and nothing but cards (disks and tapes came along later).   
   >> Yet somehow we managed to run accounts receivables, payrolls, and   
   >> general ledgers for offices all over town.   
   >   
   > Hardware was expensive back then, and programmers were cheap.   
      
   That's not an excuse to stop worrying about performance.   
      
   Hardware is still expensive nowadays, it's just that it became a tad bit   
   easier to get computing machinery, but it's still something expensive   
   that a lot of people on the universe don't have a wallet to afford. Others   
   do, but that also doesn't mean they can't criticize lack of performance.   
      
   Take for example the amazing insistence seen in using 3D effects and   
   animations in some UI design. That is at the very least annoying with   
   hardware where it runs flawlessly, and easily becomes very degrading   
   performance-wise once you walk past that threshold of the few   
   combinations where it works well.   
      
      
   Discarding the worry because "hardware was expensive back then" is like   
   only quoting a small part of that Knuth remark on optimization to   
   possibly convey the opposite point (the whole quote is in support of   
   optimization, and IIRC merely a criticism of unguided optimization   
   efforts (hence the "*premature*".))   
      
   --   
   Nuno Silva   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)