> the bogus "optimizing is evil" knuth quote. Read the quote again - Knuth talks about "PREMATURE optimization"! (it is a common mistake to leave the word out

> the bogus "optimizing is evil" knuth quote. Read the quote again - Knuth talks about "PREMATURE optimization"! (it is a common mistake to leave the word out - but it alters the meaning significantly). You should optimize only when you know what should be optimized (and how), which is very true for all platforms alike. And it is just common sense if you think about it. Why is this quote important? Because most "not so good" programmers spend hours and hours polishing things that are not important (see StackOverflow for huge number of examples) but they feel ( / know / sense /...) will make for a better performance. On the other hand they often sacrifice code legibility, correctness and even the real performance in the process. Not bogus at all.