Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

 

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--
Quote due to Donald Knuth, "Structured Programming with Goto Statements", Computing Surveys 6:4 (December 1974), pp. 261–301, §1. Knuth refers to it as "Hoare's Dictum" 15 years later in "The Errors of TeX", Software—Practice & Experience 19:7 (July 1989), pp. 607–685. However, the attribution to Hoare is doubtful.

 

C. A. R. Hoare

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Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.

 

Donald Knuth

 

So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

 

Ayn Rand

 

However, many applied optimization problems have not been considered yet. It is necessary to use optimization methods of quantum and bio-molecular systems, because of the practical importance of the implementation of physical processes satisfying the required quality criteria. Most of the attention is focused on the following problems: … 2. Mathematical modeling of controlled physical and chemical processes in the brain; [to] consider the brain as a quantum macroscopic object (Gomatam, 1999).

 

Ravi Gomatam

 

One tortured soul I know who suffers from amazingly premature ejaculation -- I mean so premature that he hasn't got any children after eleven years of marriage -- was told by the priest that it was probably a blessing in disguise. What a piece of advice to give to a poor sod who comes off at the sound of his wife's car in the drive.

 

Tom Baker

 

There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

 

Isaac Asimov