Oh, people can abuse anything. Maybe they want their CSS all in-line at the top of the dynamic HTML. So they run the preprocessor during page generation on the server.
Use a separate CSS via link tag? Oh no, I heard that was slow. Set expires cache header for 1 day? Oh no, that makes testing hard for me and what if the CSS changes?
Web developers sometimes use the dumbest reasons to avoid doing good things.
I read it as using 50ms of CPU and it didn't say where. Using an extra 50 ms of server CPU happens all the time in my experience and no one seems to think this is a problem.
At least not until they try to solve the C10K problem or survive the "Slashdot Effect." That's when people discover that static pages are king.
More likely, they're completely oblivious to the impact their changes are making, and they're just looking to "make it work" on their computer for that one page load a minute.
Use a separate CSS via link tag? Oh no, I heard that was slow. Set expires cache header for 1 day? Oh no, that makes testing hard for me and what if the CSS changes?
Web developers sometimes use the dumbest reasons to avoid doing good things.