Considering that this was the 50s and the first compiler was written by Grace Hopper in 1952 I think judging that guy is a little unfair. We are at the moment

Considering that this was the 50s and the first compiler was written by Grace Hopper in 1952 I think judging that guy is a little unfair. We are at the moment at a point where Hardware is (to a degree) cheaper than manpower. You might want to think that one cost can be traded in for the other, which often is the case, yet there are those moments were the assembler programmer might miss the asymptotically more efficient solution that saves magnitudes of time and situations were that Cache-Miss in one of the inner loops just kills performance (and maybe kills that startup because the Application just stalls). While I would never ever want to work like Mel, I share the admiration for Mel's work and propose that "Best Practices" be renamed "Somewhat-Optimal Practices" in his honor.