Premature optimization

“Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.” — Donald Knuth

I think you can replace the word programming with the word design and that would still be true.

2 comments

  1. This has been bopping around at the back of my head (as most of your posts do).

    My interpretation here is limiting design to a pre-conceived solution during the exploration phase kills any possible innovation.

    Is that what you meant by “premature optimization” of design?

    It’s fuzzy and I’m trying to poke distinctly at the concept.

  2. Right on. Lately I’ve been doing new product development, and in that context it means to me that we need to generate a lot of new ideas before selecting one, which is difficult when you have 100 interesting ideas in front of you but know that you’ll need to get 300 in order to find 3 viable ones.

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