Most performance optimized code can be abstracted such that it reads cleanly, regardless of how low level the internals get. This is the entire premise of the R

Most performance optimized code can be abstracted such that it reads cleanly, regardless of how low level the internals get. This is the entire premise of the Rust compiler/"zero cost abstractions". Or how numpy is vectorized under the hood. No need for the user to be exposed to this. Writing "poor code" to make perf gains is largely unnecessary. Though there are certainly micro-optimizations that can be made by avoiding specific types of abstractions. The lower level the code, the more variable naming/function encapsulation (which gets inlined), is needed for the code to read cleanly. Most scientific computing/algorithmic code is written very unreadably, needlessly.