This is one where I’m fully comfortable with feeling like an impostor. I’ve gotten this far (~20 years) without more than a cursory glance at machine code, I’ll be pleased if I retire at the same level of relevant expertise.
Edit: don’t get me wrong! I admire the talent that goes into this and similar efforts, and find performance-chasing particularly inspiring in any context. This is just an area of that which I don’t anticipate ever wanting to tread myself.
The arrival of tools like Compiler Explorer means examining the assembly code is trivial. It's quite easy to fall down a rabbit hole of code tweaks to see what effect they have on codegen. Even examining the differences bwtween gcc and clang can be quite revealing.
Edit: don’t get me wrong! I admire the talent that goes into this and similar efforts, and find performance-chasing particularly inspiring in any context. This is just an area of that which I don’t anticipate ever wanting to tread myself.