[nerdponx]

It's worth distinguishing between algorithmic optimizations, optimizations that generally take advantage of the language standard/runtime, and optimizations that are highly specific for one machine/platform/implementation. It's also worth keeping track of relative programmer effort to optimize.

I think most people are moderately-optimized benchmarks, i.e. moderate effort expended relative to baseline implementation effort.

That is, people are interested in getting the most performance out of the least amount of effort.

Obviously some people want and need to care about extreme peak optimization. But if you are writing benchmarks for a wide audience, that probably should not be your priority.