Code is run more than read (olano.dev)

Article summary

The article discusses the importance of considering the needs of users, maintainers, and operators when developing software, and how these needs can sometimes conflict with business goals. It presents a mental model for prioritizing these needs, with the user being the most important, followed by the operator, and then the developer. The article also touches on the idea that software development should prioritize readability and maintainability over performance. The author argues that while business goals are important, they should not come at the expense of the user experience.

Main themes

• Software development priorities
• User experience
• Performance vs readability
• Business goals vs user needs
• Latency and its impact
• Developer efficiency vs performance
• Ethics in software development

What commenters say

• Some argue that prioritizing readability and maintainability is more important than optimizing for performance, as it saves developer time in the long run.
• Others counter that performance is crucial for user experience and that optimizing for it is necessary, even if it means sacrificing some readability.
• There is a disagreement on whether the needs of the business and the user are aligned, with some arguing that they are not always the same.
• It is suggested that the cost of optimizing for performance should be considered in terms of the impact on users, rather than just the cost of developer time.
• Some commenters argue that the article's title is misleading and that the real focus should be on finding a balance between different priorities, rather than pitting them against each other.
• The importance of latency and its impact on user experience is highlighted, with some arguing that it is often overlooked in discussions of developer efficiency versus performance.
• There is a discussion on the idea that 'trickle-down devonomics' does not work, and that making code better for developers does not necessarily benefit users.