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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Macro, not Micro - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: jsteinhardt 06 January 2013 05:29AM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 06 January 2013 07:28:59AM 12 points [-]

Knuth famously said

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Wikipedia explains:

"Premature optimization" is a phrase used to describe a situation where a programmer lets performance considerations affect the design of a piece of code. This can result in a design that is not as clean as it could have been or code that is incorrect, because the code is complicated by the optimization and the programmer is distracted by optimizing.

Does that sound like the point you're trying to explain?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 06 January 2013 07:52:46PM 2 points [-]

I think that's related, but different. I really like the quote though!

The difference is that I don't necessarily think the "design" (in this case I guess overall life structure) will be less clean if you micro-optimize, but it will take away cognitive and habit-forming resources away from the things that are actually important.

Although I suppose in the limit of absurd amounts of micro-optimization, it might indeed lead to a pretty cluttered life...

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