At 2022-08-09T20:47:09-0400, James K. Lowden wrote: > On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 14:06:45 -0500 > "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robin...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > (the "root of all evil" thing), which also got stuffed into > > Donald Knuth's mouth > > Knuth did say it. Please see " Structured Programming with go to > Statements" mentioned in "ACM Computing Surveys Vol. 6, No. 4" at > > https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/356635.356640 > and > https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/356635.356640.
Thanks, James. My problem was that I read years ago that Knuth stuffed it into Hoare's mouth... https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/premature-optimization-is-the-root-of-all-evil/ ...and my recollection bit-rotted, maybe because I hear a lot more bad programmers mindlessly citing Knuth as an authority than Hoare. (Both are eminently _worthy_ authorities, but they are not oracles. Our arts and sciences progress because we critically test and re-test the claims of our authorities, not because we keep their works on scrolls in an ark and chant their insights as supplications to a jealous deity.) Regards, Branden
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