We have an enormous problem with software optimization both in cycles and memory costs. I would love for that to change but the vast majority of customers don’t care. It’s painful to think about but most don’t care as long as it works “good enough” which is a nebulous measure that management can use to lie to shareholders.
Even mentioning that we’ve wiped out roughly a decade in hardware gains with how bloated and slow our software is doesn’t move the needle. All of the younger devs in our teams truly see no issue. They consider nextjs apps to be instant. Their term, not me putting words in their mouths. VSCode is blazingly fast in their eyes.
We’ve let the problem slide so long that we have a whole generation of upcoming devs that don’t even see a problem let alone care about it. Anyone who mentors devs should really hammer this home and maybe together we can all start shifting that apathy.
In the last 5 years we have blocked access to the internet through bot checks and ad networks. We block screens with ads or consent forms which aren’t even enforceable and make the user bark on command to get past.
We have become trained seals. Captcha popped up? Better bark. Cloudflare challenge appeared? Better bark like the trained seal and click the checkbox.
Nobody even talks about this. The fact these things are annoying is constantly discussed but I have yet to see any article covering the fact we have trained our species to bark when asked without question and what the ramifications are down the road.
There isn’t even a planned offramp from this trajectory, these things are going to get more pervasive and annoying while technology improves. Where doea this actually end?