Noting the amount of hype he's seen lately about the new runtime, Lerdorf wrote, "I'd love to see those same people get excited about basic profiling and identi

Noting the amount of hype he's seen lately about the new runtime, Lerdorf wrote, "I'd love to see those same people get excited about basic profiling and identifying the most costly areas of an application. Speeding up one of the faster parts of your system isn't going to give you anywhere near as much of a benefit as speeding up, or eliminating, one of the slower parts of your overall system. Good advice, and one that I've been guilty of myself. Often I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time on the fixes and enhancements that are unlikely to yield a huge improvement, instead of focusing on larger issues, because they're harder or just because everyone is talking about the new shiny tool. Not to take the analogy too far, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs do this in a business sense as well, focusing efforts on the new shiny things (Facebook, Twitter) instead of the more boring, but proven tools (phone, email). The bottom line is that you should be strategic in where you spend your time, instead of chasing whatever the cool kids are talking about.