On Thu, 05 Jul 2018 10:41:36 -0700, Jim Lee wrote:
> The horde of
> programmers a generation or two from now may have no clue how to do
> these things.
That's okay, the horde of programmers have never known how to do these
things (optimization).
They either don't do it at all, or they run riot prematurely "optimizing"
everything in sight, either obfuscating their code and introducing bugs
without actually speeding it up, or in many cases actually slowing it
down. Actually *testing* whether the code is faster is not as much fun as
writing the cleverest code you possibly can ("I sweated blood and tears
to write this genius code, of course it will be faster") so the horde
doesn't do it. And since they don't write tests either (boring and
repetitive) they don't know when they've broken their own code by
"optimizing" it.
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the
first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly
as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to
debug it. -- Brian W. Kernighan
More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency
(without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single
reason — including blind stupidity. -- W.A. Wulf
The Rules of Optimization are simple. Rule 1: Don’t do it.
Rule 2 (for experts only): Don’t do it yet.
-- Michael A. Jackson, "Principles of Program Design"
--
Steven D'Aprano
"Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing
it everywhere." -- Jon Ronson
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