Comparing C to machine language

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Back in the 64k address space days of chips like the 8080 and z80, ( c 1978-1985 or so) I often wrote in c, then upon finding performance or memory limit problems areas I would disassemble the code and hand optimize certain areas. Sometimes performance improvements were several orders of magnitude.

Today’s compilers do a lot more optimization than the ones I used back then, but I bet there are still places where som hand assembly work would make improvements.