Authors:
  • Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. 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%.

    "Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, December 1974.
Cite this Page: Citation