I couldn't agree more. I don't think compiler vectorization is that useful even for columnar (!) database we're building. The specialized JIT doesn't even use AVX512 because too much effort for little to no gain.
Vectorization (auto or manual) can really help optimize bottlenecks like evaluating simple comparisons once you're out of easy algorithmic wins. It takes so much attention it's only worth doing in the most critical cases IMO.
Auto-vectorization can be fragile.
Manual vectorization is a ton of work and difficult to maintain.
