3 ms·

The word "premature" is inside your quote.

• gameswithgo 6y ago
  What gets me about the way people use this quote, is that it is tautological. "premature optimization is bad". Yes, it must be or it would not be premature. But when a kid or new programmer posts on the internet about what is faster, or how to make a thing faster, why do we tell them this? (Most programming communities, it is inevitable that they will be told this). How do the commenters know whether the optimization is premature? Why are they worried about it, when the person is just learning/curious? Let them get good!
  • a1369209993 6y ago
    > How do the commenters know whether the optimization is premature? > when the person is just learning/curious Not that the code being bad matters in such a case, but if something is just for learning/curiousity, then it is by definition not critically important. Sometimes trying to optimize it is the terminal goal, but it's basically never a relevant instrumental goal.
    • gameswithgo 6y ago
      A lot of software would be better if more programmers had built up some intuition about performance issues by being encouraged, rather than discouraged, when learning. A lot of kids coming out of college have absolutely no exposure to anything low level, or with regard to constant factor performance improvements.
• dahart 6y ago
  Right- exactly! If you read the article, it ignored the word premature, and used the quote as a narrative suggestion that people should/would avoid any optimization based on this (incomplete) quote, and based on optimizing taking effort. It was using Knuth as a counter-point, pretending that he was saying not to optimize, and then countering with reasons to consider optimizing anyway.