This is definitely not something that should be overlooked. Choosing a more mathematically optimal algorithm might be 2-3x faster in theory (at the cost of more complexity). If you're executing that algorithm a lot, to the point where a 3x speedup is significant, well -- if you can restructure the code in a manner similar to that demonstrated in the article (avoiding costly vtable dispatches, indirection, etc) and achieve a 25x with the original simpler algorithm, then that's something worth taking into consideration. A 3x algorithmic improvement is only impressive if there isn't 25x potential speedup low-hanging fruit (from simply not writing your code in a moronic way in the first place).