On Fri, 26 Oct 2007, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
I think it was Jon Louis Bently who wrote (in his book, "Writing Efficient Programs") something to the effect, "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
That quote originally comes from Tony Hoare, popularized by a paper written by Donald Knuth in 1974. The full statement is "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%."
My favorite sound-bite on this topic is from William Wulf: "More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity." That was back in 1972. Both his and Knuth's papers centered on abusing GOTO, which typically justified at the time via performance concerns.
-- * Greg Smith gsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
