If it were positioned as an article about writing thoughtful code then I doubt the comments would be as focused on the claim in the headline. Knuth's point was

If it were positioned as an article about writing thoughtful code then I doubt the comments would be as focused on the claim in the headline. Knuth's point was that even thoughtful programmers could get caught up in pursuing performance in areas where it ultimately didn't matter, and even more critically, that even thoughtful programmers could be guilty of discarding a clear, comprehensible piece of code in favor of something terser, and less accessible due to a perceived performance benefit.