Timeline for Is premature optimization really the root of all evil?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
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| Nov 4, 2024 at 17:32 | comment | added | Nick Steele | Probably of interest to everyone here, Beyond Fireship just released a video, specifically addressing @crush's comment with 67 upvotes, performance in general, and optimization youtube.com/watch?v=_pWA4rbzvIg | |
| Mar 1, 2021 at 0:57 | comment | added | CaTs |
@crush I think that HashSets being measured and documented is irrelevant to the point. selecting the right tool for the job should also take into account the cost of using the tool and whether or not the problem being solved is worth this cost.
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| Feb 28, 2021 at 22:48 | history | edited | Dave Jarvis | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
ben != been
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| Feb 1, 2021 at 15:42 | history | edited | jaskij | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Add transcript of the full quote (for ease of reading and accesibility)
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| Feb 1, 2021 at 1:50 | history | edited | Dave Jarvis | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 115 characters in body
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| Apr 13, 2019 at 9:16 | comment | added | KolA | Yep. Basically what Knuth meant under "premature optimization" would sound more accurate as "optimization before profiling". Original quote abused too much as an excuse not to optimize code at all. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 17:46 | history | edited | gnat | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
minor typo correction
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| Apr 28, 2014 at 2:39 | comment | added | Erik Kaplun | I would like to add that premature optimization should not be confused with designing your entire application architecture to run fast in general, scale and be easily optimizable. | |
| Apr 28, 2014 at 2:38 | comment | added | Erik Kaplun |
@crush: yes: Set is also more semantically correct and informative than List, so there's more than the optimization aspect to it.
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| Jan 23, 2014 at 14:33 | comment | added | crush |
I had a 20k rep user today tell me that using a HashSet instead of a List was premature optimization. The use case in question was a statically initialized collection thats sole purpose was to serve as a look-up table. I don't think I'm wrong in saying there is a distinction in selecting the right tool for the job versus premature optimization. I think your post confirms this philosophy: There are obvious optimizations...anything that isn't trivially clear optimization should be avoided until it can be measured. The optimization of a HashSet has been thoroughly measured and documented.
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| Oct 27, 2013 at 3:20 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Michael Shaw | ||
| Oct 10, 2011 at 1:52 | vote | accept | Craig Day | ||
| May 29, 2011 at 8:37 | history | migrated | from stackoverflow.com (revisions) | ||
| Mar 1, 2010 at 17:57 | comment | added | mctylr | Being from Donald Knuth, I wouldn't be surprized if he had some evidence to back it up. BTW, Src: Structured Programming with go to Statements, ACM Journal Computing Surveys, Vol 6, No. 4, Dec. 1974. p.268. citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/… | |
| Oct 17, 2008 at 9:16 | history | answered | Scott Dorman | CC BY-SA 2.5 |