[z92]

Anybody else remember the speedup loop.

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop

tl;dr : programmer inserts a large empty loop in a UI, so that in weeks when he achieves nothing, he removes a single zero from the end of the loop counter to speed up things a bit.

[rbanffy]

I would expect the compiler to get rid of that loop.

[bee_rider]

The story is from 1990. Nowadays you would probably have to be a little bit more clever. Maybe toss in a volatile variable?

[rbanffy]

In pretty sure 1990's compilers would do that.