premature optimization
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English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
It was first coined by Donald Knuth in his 1974 monograph The Art of Computer Programming which won a Turing Award.
Noun[edit]
premature optimization (countable and uncountable, plural premature optimizations)
- (programming) The act of wasting resources on optimising source code that does not represent a significant bottleneck.
- 1973, Donald Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming:
- The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.
- 2016, Amitt Mahajan, Why you’re mispricing your VR seed round, VentureBeat
- Similar to engineering, premature optimization can cause you to focus on items that don’t materially affect your outcome and can divert your attention away from those that do.