Perlmonks is sometimes a funny place! The original post started by stating explicitely that it addressed the problem of optimizing code for big sets of data. In other words: how to optimize when you NEED to.

Why all the bashing and the warnings and the "premature optimization is the root..." routine? If you don't need to optimize then don't. If you need to then read this post and learn. Or discuss. But there is only one reply in this all thread that actually discusses optimization techniques, all the others redundantly chant the "don't optimize" mantra.

Please people, let Perlmonks be a place where such topics can be discussed, not one where they are stiffled by the official party line.

The original post made usefull suggestions, and you will be a better programer if you know the techniques it describes. So please, try being constructive and giving other techniques you used, not adding yet another "thou shalt not optimize" post to the thread. After all I don't see people answering golf posts, with "please do not write code like this", "build a test suite first" and "documentation, documentation, documentation!". There is a place for golf on Perlmonks and there should be a place for discussing optimization techniques too. They ARE useful.

Thank you for your attention, and I can now go back to chastisizing people who parse XML with regular expression ;--)