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Comment by user3939382 | Hacker News Reader

In many cases developer resources are more expensive than hardware or network resources and the decreased efficiency of modern software reflects that.

We can all agree software is not as resource efficient as it used to be on the whole.

Beyond that we’d have to discuss specific examples and benchmarks.

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I'm simultaneously grateful that we value developer time and wellbeing over software performance and appalled that we too often forget the relationship between software performance and developer time and wellbeing.

I almost exclusively use "glutenous" apps (browser, VSCode, Spotify, Discord, etc.) and have yet to experience these Electron performance issues decried in HN comment crusades. Everything is perfectly snappy. Ditto for my acquaintances. The ROI on these optimizations likely wouldn't matter for the overwhelming majority of folk.

I could be wrong. I often am. But I suspect that Electron consumes far more resources in the minds of HN users than it does in most computers.

It's possible you and your acquaintances can't tell. Similarly some people claim they can't tell a difference between a 720p video and higher. Or that they can't tell a difference between 128 kbps CBR MP3 and higher.

However the differences are real and have been measured. [1] [2] You are welcome to argue that the performance work isn't worth prioritizing, but don't fall into the trap of claiming the performance gap doesn't exist.

[1] https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/

[2] https://danluu.com/input-lag/

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