History repeats. E.W. Dijkstra argued that programming elegance and ease should be more important than efficiency. Many of his contemporaries opposed this view. Dijkstra held programming should be made easier, through definition of a machine-independent programming language. Algol was machine independent. FORTRAN was full of machine dependencies.

To Dijkstra, inefficiencies are solved soon, by next generation computers that are faster.

Today, efficiency is an afterthought in programming. But for different reasons. Today, (perceived) speed of delivery is key. Which leads to a waste of computer resources in very many cases. I write perceived between brackets. Because it is seldom better. Sloppy, hasty work leads to massive rework. But that is accepted.