My dad's first programming job was initially to mechanically change how variables where stored thus saving 1 and only 1 byte of disk space. Someone ran the numbers and having someone do that for a few months was a net savings.
A few years after that he was talking about some relatively minor optimizations that saved a full million dollars worth of hardware costs by delaying a single new computer purchase.
Regarding the point I was speaking to: it's undoubtedly true that some of those hacks were initially worthwhile. Keeping them going until the year 2000 was, by that same standard of cost effectiveness, pretty definitely a visible failure.
My dad's first programming job was initially to mechanically change how variables where stored thus saving 1 and only 1 byte of disk space. Someone ran the numbers and having someone do that for a few months was a net savings.
A few years after that he was talking about some relatively minor optimizations that saved a full million dollars worth of hardware costs by delaying a single new computer purchase.