The ethical considerations and professional obligations that go into creating a bridge aren't exactly translated into the act of creating software. If we mirrored those in a bridge building analogy the "cost my client afford" would mean the engineers would often find themselves greenlighting a bridge that would fail in sensible conditions in our current world.
No. A civil engineer's response would (should?) be immediately that the client cannot build the bridge for that cost, simply because it will kill someone as a first order effect. That's the ethical consideration. The downsides of janky rendering or poor memory management aren't quite the same unless you actually add up the power wastage and apply it as an impact on global warming. But, those are not a first order effect, and although they should be, they don't have the same influence on the solution.
There's plenty of software that can kill someone as a first-order effect. If you allow second-order, there's even more.
Avionics. Air traffic control. Industrial control. Automotive software. 911 dispatch. Medical instruments. Medical information. Military command and control. Mechanical engineering analysis software.
That's not what I'm saying. If a web page takes 2s to render rather than a theoretical minimum of "immediately", for most software that most people write, no one will die, or be hurt, or even feel too bad as a first-order effect. Obviously, if one is writing flight control software, or somesuch, then the stakes are higher, and one ought to be aware of that. That's the practicality calculation. If you're going to kill/hurt/really upset someone, then what you're doing is not fit for purpose (unless that is the purpose :) )
