Sure, it's certainly valuable to realize that you rarely get an optimization in one case that's not pessimal in another, and it is well-removed from the constra

Sure, it's certainly valuable to realize that you rarely get an optimization in one case that's not pessimal in another, and it is well-removed from the constrained environments that people work through for demoing algorithms. I was just thinking in terms of more abstract optimization (e.g. platform-agnostic ones that just strictly reduce work to be done) versus platform-specific optimizations/workarounds/bin-packing (like nops to prevent your pipelines or cache lines from being pathological).