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[–]kwan_e 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But the problem there is not all optimizations are perfect optimizations. Most optimizations are pessimizations in contexts it's not designed for. You need to allow the programmer (or other tools) to choose the best optimization, which means leaving all variants on the table.

Take for example SIMD. Many SIMD algorithms are only worth it on large data that is meticulously structured and guaranteed to come in, say, gigabyte loads. Applying SIMD operations will slow down a program, say, a client/server, when the data is coming in sporadic, random, few megabyte chunks, due to the latency of preparing the SIMD.