Should we still be optimizing “in the small”?

Question

I was changing my for loop to increment using ++i instead of i++ and got to thinking, is this really necessary anymore? Surely today\'s compilers

Answer 1

An interesting observation I've had over the years is that optimized code of one generation back seems to actually be counter-optimized in the following generation. This is i.e. due to processor implementations changing so that if/else becomes a bottleneck in modern CPUs, where pipelines are deep. I would say clean, short, concise code is often the best end result. Where optimization really counts is in the data structures, to get them right and slim.