Perhaps it's unrealistic in the sense that this is unrealistically-optimisable code.
Real-world code has closures, allocations, and pointer-dererencing. This code is just iterations, additions and modulus.
> This code is just iterations...
Which is what the average programmer out there writes. Therefore, I think this is actually a good realistic benchmark.
Precisely - its bad code, which is what most code is!
What's a Github repository with good code?
All code is bad, some is useful
What the average programmer out there writes is just a tip on the iceberg of what gets executed. And an incredibly small tip.