>I now strongly encourage explicit loops for everything, and hope the compiler unrolls it properly.

I get why this is a thing. Sometimes an unrolled loop is faster. But if this is really an issue, why isn't there a [UnRoll] modifier or a preprocessor or something that handles that for you?

Something like this:

  for (int i = 0; i < x; i++;) {
    dothing(x[i]);
  }

versus:

  unroll for (int i = 0; i < x; i++;) {
    dothing(x[i]);
  }

Only the compiler / preprocessor would unroll the second one. You have the best of both worlds with a reduced chance of subtle errors.