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.

— Donald Knuth, Computer Programming as an Art (1974)

Source: http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/premature-optimization-is-the-root-of-all-evil/

From Computer Programming as an Art (1974), p. 671; the wording varies from Knuth's 1974 'Structured Programming with Goto Statements'.

Topics: programming, software engineering