alt Hacker NewsPremature optimization doesn't mean "We have an obvious fix sitting in front of us that will definitely improve things."
It means "We think we have something that could help performance based on a dubiously applicable idea, but we have no real workload to measure it on. But we're going to do it anyway."
So it doesn't save us from anything, it potentially delays launching and gives us the same result that product team would have given us, but more expensive.
Replies
PunchyHamster • today at 4:38 PM
> It means "We think we have something that could help performance based on a dubiously applicable idea, but we have no real workload to measure it on. But we're going to do it anyway."
the problem is that it doesn't say that directly so people without experience take it at face value.
Yes, you and me understand that quote, probably mostly because we've both read all the text around the quote too, not just the quote itself. But there is a lot of people who dogmatically follow things other's write about without first digging deeper, and it's these people I was talking about before. Lots of people seemingly run on whatever soundbites they can remember.