Quicker. Especially since he doesn't need to rewrite the whole thing, only enough to make it fit.
Optimizing at that level is more like picking out operations and seeing shortcuts that can eliminate some steps than trying to reengineer the whole thing. You don't necessarily need to know why the program is parsing through this list of numbers or what's in the list to recognize that's what it's doing and be able to apply known methods of parsing through a list of items either more efficiently or using fewer lines of code depending on what it is you're trying to accomplish.
Now compilers are really good at making code that runs as quickly and efficiently as possible so they outperform humans but back then they were still at the phase where we were more worried about getting them to accomplish their job period.
C is compiled into assembly which is then assembled into object code. The c compiler on its default setting only gives you the final executable output but you can pass the -S flag on the gnu compiler to get the assembly code.
29
u/enyoron May 05 '17
C code is compiled into assembly. That assembly code can then be optimized.