With results that good it is surprising that you didn't document your benchmark procedures and include them in your article. I too feel comfortable working wit

With results that good it is surprising that you didn't document your benchmark procedures and include them in your article. I too feel comfortable working with modern CPUs but after performance sensitive projects I benchmark and/or profile to identify what I didn't know. How else can you learn (after listening to all the experts and reading all the documentation)? As for your feeling it would have taken longer with the "alternative approach", I must again ask for numbers. How do you know which approach would take longer without taking measurements on it? Is that with you taking that approach or an expert with that approach taking it. Are you an expert in that approach, yet humbly avoided stating so in the blog post? I don't really see them as alternatives. Using all the knowledge you have up front is simply a good design strategy, but once that knowledge is exhausted you can get more through testing empirically.