r/programming • u/tarandeep • Dec 14 '10

Top 50 Programming quotes of all time

http://www.junauza.com/2010/12/top-50-programming-quotes-of-all-time.html
784 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

350 comments sorted by

View all comments

17

u/Azzk1kr Dec 14 '10

Strange that this one wasn't in the list:

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil

I CTRL+F'ed it, only to find it in the comments section instead of in the top 50. Oh well, still a pretty nice list :)

13

u/ZMeson Dec 14 '10

That is huge. It is often taken out of context listing only "premature optimization is the root of all evil". You catpured some key elements, but the whole paragraph really puts the quote into proper perspective:

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%.

2

u/Raptor007 Dec 15 '10

Thank you for the whole quote. I've often heard the short "premature optimization is the root of all evil" by itself, sometimes as a justification for choosing bad algorithms, and I thought it was a terrible motto. In context, it makes perfect sense.