Dov Kruger

The following mantra was first stated about two decades ago in Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" column ­ defer optimization and get your code working first. This wisdom has been amplified by numerous writers on object-oriented design, coding, thinking, and more. The reigning philosophy has been stated as, "get it working first, then determine which areas are the critical ones and optimize only those." Since 20% of the code is run 80% of the time, this seems like a reasonable idea. Bentley was an early advocate of the use of profiling tools that show which parts of the code are run the most, and targeting the most critical areas first. On the whole, this is good advice, but the lesson has been learned too well. Today it's common practice to ignore efficiency, scattering layers of unnecessary inefficiency everywhere without thought. This article shows that it's jus... (more)