Since when did I become an advocate for optimizing things by hand?
Azathoth is right. You seem to be changing sides often in minor subtopics to suit you're argument. First you say that micro-optimizing your code is useless and a big waste of time. I agree.
Now you switch sides saying only lazy programmers benefit from compiler optimizations, implying that non-lazy programmers micro-optimize their code (micro-optimizations are you're only alternate to compiler optimizations). You're sure about this?
It's the same technology (Windows, DirectX blah, blah, blah) it just doesn't work anymore. No try the same with something written in Java. Not only will it still work, it will work better than it did 10 years ago, because it takes advantage of the fact that technology isn't static.
I only remember a few 3D games several years ago I played that were distinctly Java-based. One was a simple RTS-style game, and actually ran fairly well. The other was a more high-tech 3D game more visually comparable to something like Far Cry. Not only did it run bad years ago, but it still runs bad now (even after upgrading my PC).
Maybe I'm not understanding this multi-core technology, but please explain to me how a game written for 4 cores (game, physics, AI, graphics) can be seamlessly scaled to 16 cores, for example.
Already tried that suggestion. They didn't buy it.
That's not true. You're suggestion that algorithms should be improved was not disregarded. My own words were:
Well of course you should always use an optimal algorithm. I'm talking about a case where you can't optimize the algorithm any more, and it's just up to the compiler/hardware to provide you with the computational power you need.