You can only really get the lowhanging fruit that way. There are so many different methods of optimization that you have to know where to start. You have to hav

You can only really get the lowhanging fruit that way. There are so many different methods of optimization that you have to know where to start. You have to have a good model of the underlying system. Otherwise you won't understand why boxed integers are inherently slow. Or why an array of tuples can be much slower than a tuple of arrays. Modern languages completely abstract from fundamental things like indirection. Consequently, it becomes almost impossible to accurately estimate the performance of algorithms in high level programming languages. Waiting for people with experience optimizing prolog programs to disagree with me...