> That is, any sort of astonishing improvements is often a sign of the original version being crappy, so it's also a red flag even if it's ultimately the good n

> That is, any sort of astonishing improvements is often a sign of the original version being crappy, so it's also a red flag even if it's ultimately the good news. Actually, I'd argue they are fixing other people's mistakes with some of this. A great example are the changes around devirtualization and/or removing certain branches, be it in the code level or at the CLR (.NET VM) level. 5-10 years ago, these changes would likely provide far less benefit, possibly not even worth the effort. But thanks to Spectre/Meltdown/etc, getting rid of such things (especially near the IO layer) has become more important.