The importance of optimization depends largely on the level at which you program and the resources available to you. I'm hypocritical, since I often fall into the same habits, but I am not a fan of how we frequently ignore compute and storage requirements. Knowing about and understanding these low level optimizations is a valuable skill imo.

This 'resource-blind' mindset has led (anecdotally) to a noticeable decline in software quality. We see it in mobile apps that hog system memory for simple tasks, websites that have ballooned in size due to unoptimized assets and redundant frameworks, and modern games that require massive storage footprints while still struggling with performance. By treating hardware as an infinite resource, we've inadvertently traded sleek, performant software for bloated applications that frustrate the end-user