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Similarly, as Jeff Atwood put it: "performance is a feature"

https://blog.codinghorror.com/performance-is-a-feature/

Performance takes time and intention. It needs to be planned for _like it's a feature_ or it won't get worked on. Usually this means working with business analysts to communicate to your customer that performance needs to be thought of like a feature -- AKA given its own time and effort and space.

Often perf reqs dictate the systems/languages/FWs that may be considered. Thus these reqs are very important to be known up front.

You can add many features later, but some level of perf is hard once you have 50k line of app code on top of, for instance, Rails. This because it's hard to change language/FW, compared to adding a new functionality on top.

Indeed, and like any feature, it must be considered against other features and have its priority determined through user research and cost-benefit analysis. It's not an end goal for its own sake. Maybe it's more important than delivering new functionality. Maybe it's not.

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