September 12, 2025

Why devs not care about performance

I read this on Reddit [redacted]: “Why do most programmers that I talk to, who have more experience than me, seem to not care about performance as much? Why does a web page takes 3s to load? Why can’t you learn develop a fully functioning web app without a ton of libraries? And don’t get me started on frameworks. Does anyone relate?”

Here is my reply:

If you are talking about web applications: A simple LAMP stack performs crazy good, but is not not ‘sexy’. Newer stacks are much ‘sexier’, but in general they perform terrible. High paying companies often use ‘sexy’ stacks to attract programmers. Devs with more experience get that and will choose ‘boring technology’ if it needs to work and ‘sexy’ stacks if they want to make money. They will be vocal about the latter. This is probably what you are experiencing. No bank runs ‘serverless’ or uses AWS.

If you are talking about websites: The >3 second pageload websites are built with DIY website builders by business owners themselves (or by devs that only know how to use low/no-code tools like Shopify, Wordpress, Wix, Webflow and Squarespace). Ignore them. Professionals should not care about DIY solutions.

Static site generators performant websites and have become boring technology over the past 10 years. However, some developers did not get that memo. They have bet on JS frameworks and are too stubborn to admit they made the wrong choice. They try to force-fit their ‘sexy’ stack to ‘boring’ problems, like building a website.

My two cents…

()  Joost van der Schee