> Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

This thing never resonated with me.

I often hear it as an excuse to ignore “optimization” at all.

It’s like “broken windows” theory. This allows slop, rot, and technical debt in. And it spreads fast.

Also if everything is unoptimized, this is not what could be easily fixed.

Death of thousand cuts, if you will.