You can only optimize at your current level of abstraction. Writing JavaScript? Have fun, there's a floor to your performance, because you're on the 28th floor of the abstraction skyscraper, and you can only go up. Part of the issue is that developers don't know any better, the other part is that everyone suddenly decided that four virtual machines crammed inside each other like a matryoshka doll is the only valid way to write software anymore.
They don't know how, that's the entire problem. Six months in a crappy boot camp doesn't teach you a single thing about computers qua computers. The industry has been suffering with mediocrity for so long, that even today's managers don't know what performant software looks like. But as long as people get paid, nobody cares. It's depressing as all hell.
I don't know if not being able to remember filesystem conventions is Linux's fault. Computers have a lot of esoterica and random facts to recall. How is this one any different?