On Fri, 26 Oct 2007, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> I think it was Jon Louis Bently who wrote (in his book, "Writing
> Efficient Programs") something to the effect, "Premature optimization is
> the root of all evil."
That quote originally comes from Tony Hoare, popularized by a paper
written by Donald Knuth in 1974. The full statement is "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%."
My favorite sound-bite on this topic is from William Wulf: "More
computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without
necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including
blind stupidity." That was back in 1972. Both his and Knuth's papers
centered on abusing GOTO, which typically justified at the time via
performance concerns.
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* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD
