At least when I last read it a couple years ago, Intel's optimization manual recommends certain code layouts. For example in the absence of better information a

At least when I last read it a couple years ago, Intel's optimization manual recommends certain code layouts. For example in the absence of better information a conditional jump backwards would be predicted as true (because that's what loops look like) while a jump forward is seen as less likely to happen (error conditions and else branches look like that). Not sure how consistent this is across architectures, and how useful it still is. But at least it used to be a thing