Not to be mean, but how was any of this hard? True, I work on server-side development and I'm not a neckbeard, but this is part of my day-to-day job and I think

Not to be mean, but how was any of this hard? True, I work on server-side development and I'm not a neckbeard, but this is part of my day-to-day job and I think the approach is pretty straightforward. Step 1. Design a test performance data set. Great if it comes from your production data! Step 2. Run your algorithm and attach a profiler. Step 3. Look at any method about 5% utilization. Can you use a better algorithm, more compact data structure, improve memory locality, or tighten the loop? Googling for fast hash functions would give you a good answer here. Step 4. Repeat steps 2-3 until you give up. The difference with this pull request is the level of documentation that went into it. We're impressed because nobody shows these levels of documentation and humor when writing about their change. That's what's impressive.