It'd be nice if people replied instead of just downvoting.
You're missing the point of a compiler. It does a huge amount of work to reliably get a very, very good solution to a huge problem in a reasonable amount of time. Depending on the optimization settings, of course it is not going to try its hardest to get the very best code out of every single function. Besides, you can always use the output of the compiler as your starting point for hand optimization.
Why don't you try your hand at some Fortran kernels where a compiler might spend a few minutes or hours optimizing the hell out of something extremely important? I doubt you'll beat a Fortran compiler at its main job.
No one is claiming that you can't beat the compiler some of the time. But you can't beat the compiler even 0.01% of the time, given how much code there is out there.
I can't beat the compiler even 0.01% of the time? Really? Because that's the point of the article -- I just grabbed the first piece of C I found and managed to beat the compiler.
You're missing the point of a compiler. It does a huge amount of work to reliably get a very, very good solution to a huge problem in a reasonable amount of time. Depending on the optimization settings, of course it is not going to try its hardest to get the very best code out of every single function. Besides, you can always use the output of the compiler as your starting point for hand optimization.
Why don't you try your hand at some Fortran kernels where a compiler might spend a few minutes or hours optimizing the hell out of something extremely important? I doubt you'll beat a Fortran compiler at its main job.
No one is claiming that you can't beat the compiler some of the time. But you can't beat the compiler even 0.01% of the time, given how much code there is out there.