Comment by cogman10

Completely agreed here [1].

And as I point out, what Knuth was talking about in terms of optimization was things like loop unrolling and function inlining. Not picking the right datastructure or algorithm for the problem.

I mean, FFS, his entire book was about exploring and picking the right datastructures and algorithms for problems.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849194