but it still should happen. every project (of a certain size) should have at least 1-2 programmers whose job it is to make the code faster & smaller. frankly, this could well be the best use of AI on code — not to generate it, but to use its potential speed to chew through existing code bases, outputting squashed-down, streamlined code which is tested to return the same results as the original (think the dream of gentoo, but every program on your system optimized for your particular hardware).