Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

premature optimization

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.38 in modern English

Syllables: pre-ma-ture op-ti-miza-tion
IPA

38

Scrabble Score

21

Letters

6

Syllables

11

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The act of wasting resources on optimising source code that does not represent a significant bottleneck.

Countable; Uncountable

Example Sentences

"The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming."
"2016, Amitt Mahajan, Why you’re mispricing your VR seed round, VentureBeat Similar to engineering, premature optimization can cause you to focus on items that don’t materially affect your outcome and can divert your attention away from those that do."

Etymology

It was first coined by Donald Knuth in his 1974 monograph The Art of Computer Programming which won a Turing Award.

Usage

Inflected Forms

premature optimizations (plural) premature optimisation (alternative)

Questions

What does premature optimization mean?: The act of wasting resources on optimising source code that does not represent a significant bottleneck.
Where does premature optimization come from?: It was first coined by Donald Knuth in his 1974 monograph The Art of Computer Programming which won a Turing Award.

How to pronounce premature optimization

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