@anchorite surprisingly, that post was inspired by git rebasing a few commits of a few lines of code and taking several seconds to do it. I think more than just games could try their hand at optimizing now and then.

Though I probably agree I would quibble with you about what things are "clearly" not optimized, it's hard to know that sort of thing without knowing their constraints. I just have a vague sense that hashing a few kb on a modern pc should take well under a second.