> One of those absolutely true statements that can obscure a bigger reality.

To be clear, I'm not misquoting Knuth if that's what you mean. I'm arguing that in this case, specifically, this optimization was premature, as evidenced by the fact it didn't really have an impact (they explain other processes that run in parallel dominated the load times) and it caused trouble down the line.

> Some of those decisions don't pan out.

Indeed, some premature optimizations will and some won't. I'm not arguing otherwise! In this case, it was a bad call. It happens to all of us.

> I don't see a reason to think this. What are you thinking?

You're right, I got this backwards. While the time savings would have been minimal, the data duplication wasn't that big so the cost (for something that didn't pan out) wasn't that bad either.