Knuth also said:

The improvement in speed from Exampe 2 to Example 2a is only about 12%, and many people would pronounce that insignificant. The conventional wisdom shared by many of today's software engineers calls for ignoring efficiency in the small; but I believe this is simply an overreaction to the abuses they see being practiced by pennywise-and-pound-foolish programmers, who can't debug or maintain their "optimized" programs.

In established engineering disciplines a 12 % improvement, easily obtained, is never considered marginal; and I believe the same viewpoint should prevail in software engineering.

Of course I wouldn't bother making such optimizations on a one-shot job, but when it's a question of preparing quality programs, I don't want to restrict myself to tools that deny me such efficiencies.


Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"I'd rather go naked than blow up my ass"

In reply to Re^2: As Efficient as Possible by BrowserUk
in thread As Efficient as Possible by mr_p

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