I once took some matlab code and got a 200x+ improvement for a couple of days work, the code was atrocious. So it really matters to understand your tool. I thin

I once took some matlab code and got a 200x+ improvement for a couple of days work, the code was atrocious. So it really matters to understand your tool. I think the person I took it from was afraid to change anything that worked after it was prototyped.