I just felt that they were trying to say more than the obvious and I had missed what they were getting at. Personally I don't encounter usually encounter "Don'

I just felt that they were trying to say more than the obvious and I had missed what they were getting at. Personally I don't encounter usually encounter "Don't optimize prematurely" being used as a stand alone statement. When it's being given as advice then it's backed up with examples of when an optimization is premature and when it's a good time to optimize. The few times I do encounter it variations of it being used a statement is in code reviews, but then you've got the context of the code being commented on to help understand what the reviewer is getting at.