I think users have a performance budget and once you are inside that budget, there are rapidly diminishing returns for faster speed.
> it's obvious that modern software will be as slow and inefficient as it possibly can be before normal people notice and complain
Thats sort of circular. If people don't complain there's probably better places to spend engineering effort. Besides, the slower speed is traded off for something: a safer abstraction, faster development, features the users are requesting, better security, etc.
I think some of us on HN have higher expectations for software performance than "normal" users, so we are the first to complain (or use alternate, faster software).
> it's obvious that modern software will be as slow and inefficient as it possibly can be before normal people notice and complain
Thats sort of circular. If people don't complain there's probably better places to spend engineering effort. Besides, the slower speed is traded off for something: a safer abstraction, faster development, features the users are requesting, better security, etc.
I think some of us on HN have higher expectations for software performance than "normal" users, so we are the first to complain (or use alternate, faster software).