I don't think either of us needs to convince the other of anything, I'm mostly outlining this here so that maybe someone is actually inspired to think critically about some of these things, especially the workforce bits and the cost of dependencies.
> Outside of really edge case stuff like real time low level systems software optimizing performance is not that hard and I've worked with many engineers over my long career that can do it. They just rarely have the incentive. In a few particular areas where it's critical and users are willing to pay software can still command a premium price. Ableton Live is a good example.
This seems like a generous take to me, but I suppose it's usually better for the soul to assume the best when it comes to people. Companies with explicit performance requirements will of course self-select for people capable of actually considering performance (or die), but I don't take that to mean that the rest of the software development workforce is actually able to, because I've seen so, so many examples of the exact opposite.