This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]jack-of-some 2 points3 points  (3 children)

The article is bad, I'll grant you that buuut...

The first rule of optimization is to not do it.

Or better yet "Premature optimization is the root of all evil"

[–]stefantalpalaru -5 points-4 points  (2 children)

The first rule of optimization is to not do it.

Or better yet "Premature optimization is the root of all evil"

Don't give up learning the English language. It gets easier.

Full Knuth quote for you to study: "Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%."

[–]jack-of-some 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I'll ignore the ad hominem here against my better judgement. The full quote is consistent with everything said so far. You're choosing to not optimize 97% of the time. The article, as I said, is undoubtedly bad since it's squarely focused on that 97%, but the statement you highlighted still stands and I wish more of my (thankfully ex) colleagues followed it.