yeah, but the more you optimize, the less your code is a way to communicate an idea on how/why (business wise) you did some things. I used to optimize some code

yeah, but the more you optimize, the less your code is a way to communicate an idea on how/why (business wise) you did some things. I used to optimize some code. When I try to squeeze every CPU cycle, then I usually have to turn my algorithm upside down so that they "fit" correctly to the CPU architecture (cache, branch prediction, avoiding costly, instructions). In the end, algorithm cleverness, which is important to understand to read my code is totally muddied by optimization techniques here and there. Having the right balance between performance and readability is tough... Another example I cam across a while ago is matrix multiplication. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_of_matrix_multiplication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_of_ma... The naive algorithm is super simple to understand and corresponds to the actual math definition. But the optimized algorithm, that's something totally different :-)