3 ms·

You made an optimization for the future when enough bottlenecks have been fixed such that this one part becomes the bottleneck.

chubot 6y ago
Except that there are infinite such non-bottlenecks, and all the effort you spend on there is effort not spent on the real bottlenecks. In other words, all engineering is time- and cost-constrained. Anybody can build a good chair for $10,000 or a good PC for $100,000. Doesn't mean it's good engineering.
- nix23 6y ago
  >not spent on the real bottlenecks BE LOGICAL! Of course you first fix the big bottlenecks. >good PC for $100,000. Doesn't mean it's good engineering. Of course it is...or can you gold platter a pc case?
- jorangreef 6y ago
  "Anybody can build a good chair for $10,000 or a good PC for $100,000." And some people can build a great PC for $1,000 that runs circles around the good PC for $100,000. There's so much more to engineering than thinking in terms of time and cost constraints. Those are real constraints, but they're not the most important. Engineering is design. If you have good design, good insight, you can do things that people with infinite time and budget could never dream to achieve. You can start making a product that's a hundred times more powerful for a tenth of the price in a fraction of the time. If you don't have good design, good insight, then no amount of time or budget can help you.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Yes they can indeed: https://blogs.systweak.com/someone-has-built-a-gigantic-100000-pc/ https://blogs.systweak.com/someone-has-built-a-gigantic-1000...
tjalfi 6y ago
There are several assumptions that are far from a given with premature optimization. 1. Adding the optimization didn’t make the code more complicated. 2. Adding the optimization didn’t introduce a bug. 3. This part of the code will be a bottleneck in the future. The time spent optimizing is a write-off if the project is canceled or that portion is replaced.
- peteradio 6y ago
  All, true, but if you have a time budget and you know this thing will prevent you from meeting it AND making this change now will inform the architecture then its the right optimization to make.

chubot 6y ago

Except that there are infinite such non-bottlenecks, and all the effort you spend on there is effort not spent on the real bottlenecks. In other words, all engineering is time- and cost-constrained. Anybody can build a good chair for $10,000 or a good PC for $100,000. Doesn't mean it's good engineering.

nix23 6y ago
>not spent on the real bottlenecks BE LOGICAL! Of course you first fix the big bottlenecks. >good PC for $100,000. Doesn't mean it's good engineering. Of course it is...or can you gold platter a pc case?
jorangreef 6y ago
"Anybody can build a good chair for $10,000 or a good PC for $100,000." And some people can build a great PC for $1,000 that runs circles around the good PC for $100,000. There's so much more to engineering than thinking in terms of time and cost constraints. Those are real constraints, but they're not the most important. Engineering is design. If you have good design, good insight, you can do things that people with infinite time and budget could never dream to achieve. You can start making a product that's a hundred times more powerful for a tenth of the price in a fraction of the time. If you don't have good design, good insight, then no amount of time or budget can help you.
Koshkin 6y ago
Yes they can indeed: https://blogs.systweak.com/someone-has-built-a-gigantic-100000-pc/ https://blogs.systweak.com/someone-has-built-a-gigantic-1000...

tjalfi 6y ago

There are several assumptions that are far from a given with premature optimization. 1. Adding the optimization didn’t make the code more complicated. 2. Adding the optimization didn’t introduce a bug. 3. This part of the code will be a bottleneck in the future. The time spent optimizing is a write-off if the project is canceled or that portion is replaced.

peteradio 6y ago
All, true, but if you have a time budget and you know this thing will prevent you from meeting it AND making this change now will inform the architecture then its the right optimization to make.