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 optimiza

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.