Is writing a perfectly space efficient data format comparable to hand writing assembly today? Today's generic compression algorithms are excellent.
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Switching from xz to zstd package compression in Arch Linux gives a ~13x improvement in decompression time with only a ~1% increase in file size!
Over the last 15 years, ~50% of improvement in chess engines is due to smarter programming, not better hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/76cwz4/15_years_of_chess_engine_development/
What other domains are like this? Lossy audio/image compression is definitely better today. There must be others situations.
Great introduction to the AV1 video codec, inter/intra frame compression, and exploiting correlations to save bytes: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/av1/demo1.shtml
The Xiph posts are always good with great explanatory diagrams/sample pictures.