"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
— Programming

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Computer science
Original Language: English

Sources

Knuth refers to this as "Hoare's Dictum" 15 years later in "The Errors of Tex", Software—Practice & Experience 19:7 (July 1989), pp. 607–685. However, the attribution to C. A. R. Hoare is doubtful. — All three of these papers are reprinted in Knuth, Literate Programming, 1992, Center for the Study of Language and Information