like many people, the first program i ever made for fun was on a texas instruments calculator. trying to fit the whole thing in the available space, and getting it to run at tolerable speeds, was just as big of a puzzle as getting the program to work like i wanted.

i think for the majority of the history of computing, we've had to pay way more attention to efficiency, and overcoming the limitations of hardware, than most everyday programmers have to deal with today. and as we start bumping up against physical limitations like this, the skills and techniques required to optimize programs for space and execution speed will start to become more important to the majority of programmers again.