<i>&quot;In software, your material cost is near 0...&quot;</i><p>Material cost (e.g., hardware on which to deploy your program) is only near zero for small systems. If you&#x27;re implementing a large system for a billion users, like Google search or Facebook, writing inefficient code could cost you a few extra acres of hardware in a data center and enough electricity to power a small city.<p>Actually, even small systems can have significant hardware costs associated with software. If the embedded software in a device you&#x27;re building doesn&#x27;t fit into your ROM, you&#x27;ll need to use a bigger ROM, which may add up to a lot of money over a production run of millions of devices.