It's not just the direct cost of a branch, it's the downstream costs as well. Removing (or automatically folding branches in a compiler) can lead to optimizations after the branch.

E.g.

    if (foo > 0) {
      x = 3;
    } else {
      x = 7;
    }
    return x * 9;

If the compiler (or programmer) knows foo is greater than zero (even if we don't know what it actually is), then the whole thing folds into:

    return 27;

That also means that foo is not even used, so it might get dead-code eliminated.

If that gets inlined, then the optimizations just keep stacking up.

(not that the article was about that, it's just one implication of removing branches: downstream code can be optimized knowing more).

So, in summary, compilers matter.