Yeah, it's a popular argument, but it could be applied only if we talking about small and detached action, like getting value of `select` element, but if we consider the whole stack of called methods that required to perform some task and if all those methods would be slow, we would have a cumulative effect.

Analogy from the physics world - if we take electron as one isolated particle, we, loosely speaking, wouldn't have much, but if we take a whole bunch of them and align them together we would get electromagnetic radiation - one of the driving forces of the universe.

One of the main rationalization for creating Dart language is that Javascript syntax could not be fully optimized for speed, so i do think speed is matters, even in those small functions but by the remark "although it would slow us down" i just wanted to acknowledge other side of the additional abstraction.