Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Memorandum on Colonial Taxation
(Source)
Quotations about:
optimization
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There is no doubt that the “grail” of efficiency leads to abuse. 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.