[strangetortoise]

> My understanding is that most compilers can out-optimise the average developer

Do you happen to know where (what source) you got that from? I'm genuinely curious, as to my knowledge, compilers are generally still easily fooled by things that causes them unable to vectorize code or factor out conditional jumps.

To give an example here, see Mike Actons' talk below (from about 43:10 onwards) in which he describes the compiler failures.

https://youtu.be/rX0ItVEVjHc?t=2590

[danparsonson]

No specific source I could point to really, just that I've been hanging around message boards like this for a long time. I didn't mean to say it's impossible to beat a compiler or they don't have any blind spots, but thanks for the link - sounds interesting :-)