Agreed, about 99% of admins I know would not be able to identify this error, and most likely most Hacker News reads. The last sentence on your post is very true.
I’ve worked with (and been) a dev for several decades, and I can count on one hand the number of folks who would have a chance of figuring this out, and 2 fingers the number of folks who WOULD.
Of course, most never try to optimize or go so deep like this that they would ever need to, so there is that!