Also worth noting what his idea of a "small efficiency" was; he goes on to note that, say, 12% efficiency, easily gained, is not small at all! He never says to

Also worth noting what his idea of a "small efficiency" was; he goes on to note that, say, 12% efficiency, easily gained, is not small at all! He never says to throw all ideas of performance out the window when writing your initial run of code. It's just not worth it to dig down into the weeds and micro-optimize everything ahead of time, is all. But people just take this quote as liberty to completely ignore all notion of performance in their code. Maddening, and a total disservice to Knuth.