[moebrowne]

I agree with the overall sentiment of this post but I'm not sure about this:

> A codebase that is easy to maintain becomes easier to optimize.

I think optimization and maintainability are often at odds. The only example which comes to mind is loop unrolling, increases performance, decreases maintainability.

[lo1tuma]

I assume that the author means, when it is easy to change something in the code (i.e. without fear because you have a very good test automation), then it is easy to apply changes like performance optimizations.

Things like loop unrolling is probably something I wouldnt do by hand on the source code, I would probably write a script that transforms the code automatically, so the original source code stays readable.