I can't recall the last time I heard someone say "premature optimization is root of all evil" as a sanity check to someone who was overdoing things. In fact it may have been more than 20 years ago.

For one, there are usually better arguments around code comprehension.

Pretty much the only time I hear this statement is as a response to criticism. That should raise some questions about the motivations of the speaker. Quite often it comes off as a dodge, and why and what are they dodging? Additionally, the whole quote is often at odds with the point the speaker is trying to make. It's not small inefficiencies, it's factors of 5, or 10, or an extra 6 months before we run out of headroom on something.