Let's say you want to use a genetic algorithm to find a good set of weights: you generate, mutate, combine and select many random networks, and repeat this process many times. How many networks and how many times? That depends on the length of your chromosome and complexity of the task. Networks that work well for image classification need at least a million weights. The entire set of weights is a single chromosome. You realize now how computationally intractable this task is on modern hardware?