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1) in general most programmers only optimize once they perceive slowness, which means they only optimize when the hardware can't keep up with the application, which means as hardware gets more capable, things are less optimized

2) writing streaming code is harder

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Also typically programmers are highly paid, which also corresponds with them getting powerful hardware with large amounts of ram, SSD, and processor. So their machines don't see this slowness while your netbook is catching on fire.

Holy cow. I never considered this!

I guess it would also explain why the games I would write in 2011 on a netbook ran so smoothly on every other computer I tested them on, despite using the legacy OpenGL 1.1 API, etc. etc.

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