On 30 May 2013, at 12:33, Jens Alfke <j...@mooseyard.com> wrote:
>
> On May 29, 2013, at 6:30 PM, Ian Joyner <ianjoy...@me.com> wrote:
>
>> That seems to come out of a belief that well-structured code is code that
>> runs poorly
>
> No, it’s a paraphrase of a famous quote by Don Knuth ("We should forget about
> small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the
> root of all evil.”[1]) He later attributed this to C.A.R. Hoare.
OK, thanks, it was badly put on my part. I have Knuth's paper and will give it
another read (after rereading Structured Programming (Dahl, Dijkstra, Hoare)
which Knuth says will change your life).
What I am trying to point out though is that there is a misapprehension that
premature optimization means writing structured code early on so don't
structure it because you can always go and clean it up later. Rather I think we
should write well-structured code as we go. Often that will result in efficient
code (invariant statements not being in loops, etc), but that is not what is
meant by premature optimization.
This kind of optimization is more about changing the algorithm than the code.
We should beware not to lump well-structured code writing with premature
optimization just because well-structured code usually ends up being optimized
code. Well-structured code also ends up being more correct and more easily
changed and refactored.
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