This is why benchmarking is so important. It is the reality check you need. Also... it took me decades to appreciate that clear code is better than fast code.

This is why benchmarking is so important. It is the reality check you need. Also... it took me decades to appreciate that clear code is better than fast code. If it’s slow, I can rewrite the inner loop. I’d rather have clear code with one thing optimized out of clarity that an entire system of clever code that I can’t debug.