about main()

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 05 Jul 2018 10:41:36 -0700, Jim Lee wrote:

> The horde of
> programmers a generation or two from now may have no clue how to do
> these things.

That's okay, the horde of programmers have never known how to do these 
things (optimization).

They either don't do it at all, or they run riot prematurely "optimizing" 
everything in sight, either obfuscating their code and introducing bugs 
without actually speeding it up, or in many cases actually slowing it 
down. Actually *testing* whether the code is faster is not as much fun as 
writing the cleverest code you possibly can ("I sweated blood and tears 
to write this genius code, of course it will be faster") so the horde 
doesn't do it. And since they don't write tests either (boring and 
repetitive) they don't know when they've broken their own code by 
"optimizing" it.


    Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the 
    first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly
    as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to
    debug it.  -- Brian W. Kernighan


    More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency
    (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single
    reason — including blind stupidity.  -- W.A. Wulf


    The Rules of Optimization are simple. Rule 1: Don’t do it.
    Rule 2 (for experts only): Don’t do it yet.
    -- Michael A. Jackson, "Principles of Program Design"



-- 
Steven D'Aprano
"Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing
it everywhere." -- Jon Ronson