To me, that "moral of the story" is a bit backward. He most likely achieved his goal in the most efficient way, i.e. shortest possible time, by throwing hardwar

To me, that "moral of the story" is a bit backward. He most likely achieved his goal in the most efficient way, i.e. shortest possible time, by throwing hardware at the problem. Going looking for a better algorithm and implementing it might have taken longer and would have been riskier, given that he didn't know if such an algorithm existed.