This is overall very solid. However you have to be careful to not go overboard with this line of reasoning. I've seen people try to explain away inefficient cod

This is overall very solid. However you have to be careful to not go overboard with this line of reasoning. I've seen people try to explain away inefficient code by inventing a chain of optimizations that the compiler could conceivably do. If this chain is too long, it probably won't happen! The most common pitfall I've seen is relying on inlining too much (specifically a C++ template monster). As far as I can tell, compilers have a fixed number of inline passes, and don't keep inlining until they hit a fixed point.