The author critiques Dan Luu's claim that LLMs eliminate performance problems in software, arguing that while LLMs reduce the cost of optimization work, historical parallels with testing and formal methods show such optimistic predictions tend to overestimate impact. The core issue is that demand for performance scales with capability, so improvements don't eliminate the problem.
Background
This is a response piece to Dan Luu's widely discussed blog post arguing that LLMs make high-performance software engineering accessible to everyone. The author draws on experience with performance optimization work across multiple engineering roles.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Aug 22, 2026 at 10:31 PM
- Score
- 5.0 / 10