Or consider that the startup time of OSes still hasn't changed much. It was much faster for a while when SSDs came around, and Windows generally has become faster with their not-quite-shut-down technique. But normal bootups, around 30-60 secs on normal machines, 25 years ago and still now.

And the important point is: it _is_ annoying, an actual bootup in 5 seconds is easily possible from a technical perspective, and would much improve the user experience.

Take systemd, I remember it brought a lot of startup time improvements for a while, or at least promised them. I don't follow Linux very much these days, but when I do a standard installation of a popular distro - sloooow startup. Last I looked I had an issue with tons of virtual serial devices created serially, took probably 10 seconds alone.

Parkinson's law at work.

It's funny, while I've never tried Alacritty (and I'm not likely given the posts I'm reading about it around here), I'm still stuck with xterm, which in some ways has a terrible UX. But it's the fastest I've used, has the most correct VT-100 emulation (or at least programs do work), and it has by far the crispest fonts - if you're using bitmap fonts, which most modern terminals don't support anymore.

But to your actual point, of course you can write software that runs not slower, or even runs much faster, than the software of 30 years ago that ran on machines of the time. The exception proves the rule (while I feel it's always been so obvious that there was never a proof needed).

Also, Casey Muratori would like to have a word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U