3 ms·

wait wait wait, the actual quote is "PREMATURE optimization is the root of all evil". Completely different meaning

• youngtaff 4y ago
  We also shouldn't forget the full quote “There is no doubt that the holy grail of efficiency leads to abuse. Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. A good programmer will not be lulled into complacency by such reasoning, he will be wise to look carefully at the critical code; but only after that code has been identified.” — From “Structured Programming with go to Statements” (Knuth, 1974),