While I completely agree with that, I think main purpose of that excercise is to identify that developer know what performance limits of that code are.
I mean, You don't have to worry about performance issues when your devs are delivering optimized code by default, while avoiding premature optimizations :)
My answer to "Can you make it faster" is:
Do we need to? Has this become a bottle neck performance wise?
If not, don't care, lets spend time building a better product where it actually matters.
^^^^ This ^^^^
Users don't care how a product is built. They care what the product is and that it solves their problems.
And this extends beyond programming
Hows the marketing?
Hows user retention?
Is it actually solving the target group's problem?
You can have the most efficient and well engineered product but if no one knows about it or it isn't solving their problem, none of that matters
While I completely agree with that, I think main purpose of that excercise is to identify that developer know what performance limits of that code are.
I mean, You don't have to worry about performance issues when your devs are delivering optimized code by default, while avoiding premature optimizations :)
Of course, if they answer with "Lets assume that yes it has become/will become a bottle neck", then I would do my best to optimize.