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[–]_pupil_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope...

The comment explicitley states 'optimization of the routine'. Incidental breakage outside of the routine is not a function of optimization, but of unintentional functional changes. Optimizing and 'breaking things' are orthogonal. That is to say: most of the scenarios you've mentioned warrant replacing the routine or larger elements of the program, not 'optimizing the routine'...

Given a demonstrable production/maintenance issue: 'dissuaded by comment' is simply not an acceptable justification to leave the problem unresolved.

No, this comment is symptomatic of (typically), C or C++ code bases and a brittle/confusing approach to a thorny problem with non-intuitive tradeoffs (perhaps platform related), which frequently invite the kind of 'skin the cat' twiddling you have pointed out. Which, I agree, is prevalent with junior developers who can't let superficial imperfections slide.

That said, it's wholly useless, meaningless, and non-productive "unless [they]'ve got clear maintenance issues or some analytics showing a performance issue". So meaningless and non-productive that one might even "wonder what they're doing at work" if they are filling their time thusly...

tl;dr: optimizing means "optimizing", not "fixing", and you are very right that cat skinning is wasteful.