[mkl95]

On the other hand most engineers envision "improving things" as refactoring, applying code gymnastics, having more complex architecture etc. despite I/O being the most common culprit (bad/missing indexes, dumb queries, high cardinality...)

[drewcoo]

From what I've seen a lack of testability is the problem with most bad architecture. Testability seems to have a high correlation with being understandable.

If gymnastics make the code easier to understand and prove things about, then we should limber up.