That makes more sense, I second their sentiment, modern compilers will do this. I guess the trick is knowing to use numbers that have these options.

There was a recent article on HN about which compiler optimizations would occur and which wouldn't and it was surprising in two ways - first, it would make some that you might not expect, and it would not make others that you would - because in some obscure calling method, it wouldn't work. Fixing that path would usually get the expected optimization.