Rule 1: You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is.
Rule 2: Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.
Rule 3: Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)
Rule 4: Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.
Rule 5: Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.
Brief Notes
Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
Ken Thompson rephrased Pike's rules 3 and 4 as "When in doubt, use brute force.". Rules 3 and 4 are instances of the design philosophy KISS.
Rule 5 was previously stated by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. Rule 5 is often shortened to "write stupid code that uses smart objects".
Who is Rob Pike?
Content is shamelessly copy-pasted from http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/pike.html
Rule 2: Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.
Rule 3: Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)
Rule 4: Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.
Rule 5: Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.
Brief Notes
Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
Ken Thompson rephrased Pike's rules 3 and 4 as "When in doubt, use brute force.". Rules 3 and 4 are instances of the design philosophy KISS.
Rule 5 was previously stated by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. Rule 5 is often shortened to "write stupid code that uses smart objects".
Who is Rob Pike?
- Rob Pike, is now a Distinguished Engineer at Google co-authoring Go programming language, apart from other things. Prior to this stint, he worked at Bell Labs as a core member of the Unix Team.
- Author of popular books like The Practice of Programming and Unix Programming Environment
Content is shamelessly copy-pasted from http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/pike.html