There is an intermediate state where you make it "just work" but design it so that it's easy to speed up the algorithms later. Premature optimization makes you

There is an intermediate state where you make it "just work" but design it so that it's easy to speed up the algorithms later. Premature optimization makes you waste time on dumb stuff, but leaving yourself a way out is a lot less costly than optimizing everything and lets you avoid the problem you mentioned.