Catching Save - newbie

Michael Hudson mwh at python.net
Wed Apr 16 09:16:21 EDT 2003


Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> One of the most important things to learn as a programmer is this,
> as stated by various people but most popularly attributed to Knuth:
> "Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming."

And Knuth really did say it!  In "Structured Programming with goto
Statements", on page 268 of the rather naff scan[*] I have of it, we
find:

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

So even you have managed to misquote him, unless he (or someone else)
said it differently somewhere else.

Cheers,
M.

[*] you can get your own naff scan easily enough with google; I can't 
    remember where mine came from.

-- 
  I'm not particularly fond of singing GSTQ because she stands for
  some things I don't, but it's not really worth letting politics
  getting in the way of a good bawling.     -- Dan Sheppard, ucam.chat




More information about the Python-list mailing list