sidenote on performance.

“everyone knows” that software is slow (and it is!). and they have some idea that software should be ‘fast’: software performance, or “speed” is a high-status signal in programmer groups. performance is ‘measurable’ status or knowledge as a programmer.

actual performance

• fulfills specific requirement
• needs to be profiled rather than simply benchmarked
• software is advertised primarily via it’s popularity or ‘speed’.
  • frameworks w/ “speed” or “fast” in their name often get incredible popularity bonus
  • even if that ‘speed’ is dubious or comes at the expense of reliability, API design, etc. see: fasthttp in go,
• new programmers, or programmers new to something (new language, new project type, etc) are often insecure, anxious about where to start. the idea of learning something from “scratch” seems scary or impossible. ### “performance ‘performance anxiety’”

advertising gives a ‘sense of anxiety relievable by purchase’.

• people make frameworks & packages w/ the intention that they should be used.
• they write advertising copy in order so that their product is used, even if they don’t make any money off it - usually for good reasons (personal pride, confidence in their work, etc).