i've been trying to optimise some code for two hours now, entirely unsuccessfully. the naïve version generates a massive pile of movs and jmps, and i assumed i could do better. no matter what i did, i could only make the code slower. the few times i managed to make one benchmark 10% faster, the others became 50% slower.

finally, i received some very wise advice from my wife. this has helped me put things into a new perspective