Skip to content

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

— C. A. R. Hoare Attributed

Another quote →

Source, in full

Quote due to Donald Knuth, "Structured Programming with Goto Statements", Computing Surveys 6:4 (December 1974), pp. 261–301, §1. Knuth refers to it as "Hoare's Dictum" 15 years later in "The Errors of TeX", Software—Practice & Experience 19:7 (July 1989), pp. 607–685. However, the attribution to Hoare is doubtful.

More quotes by C. A. R. Hoare

I have regarded it as the highest goal of programming language design to enable good ideas to be elegantly expressed.

"The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intentions of its user."

"The real value of tests is not that they detect bugs in the code, but that they detect inadequacies in the methods, concentration, and skills of those who design and produce the code."

[ALGOL 60] is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

[About Algol 60] Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

All C. A. R. Hoare quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: C. A. R. Hoare (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.