Slow page loads and resource exhaustion require profiling to identify bottlenecks

Application running slower than expected with users complaining about page load times and server resources maxing out. Without profiling, optimization efforts may target fast code while ignoring actual bottlenecks.

Run application through cProfile to generate profile data: `python -m cProfile -o app.profile myapp.py`. Analyze with pstats module, sorting by cumulative time to identify hotspots. Focus on the top 20 functions consuming 80% of execution time.