milen.me — Premature Optimization: Universally Misunderstood

https://milen.me/writings/premature-optimization-universally-misunderstood/ · “Premature Optimization” You might have come across the famous software optimisation quote popularised by Donald Knuth: Premature optimization is the root of all evil. – Sir Tony Hoare It has been commonly interpreted as “don’t think about performance in the beginning, you can fix any performance problem later”. This interpretation is completely and categorically wrong. Original Quote It’s very common for statements to lose their original meaning when context has been stripped and that’s exactly what happened here.