The moral of the story: Don't optimize before you HAVE to. Write clear, maintainable code and profile later. Only add in all the ugly "trick" optimizations if

The moral of the story: Don't optimize before you HAVE to. Write clear, maintainable code and profile later. Only add in all the ugly "trick" optimizations if a) your compiler can't do it for you, b) you can't get a better compiler, and c) you've proven that the area in question is slow.