Skip to Content
Clean Code Cookbook
book

Clean Code Cookbook

by Maximiliano Contieri
September 2023
Intermediate to advanced
430 pages
8h 6m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Clean Code Cookbook

Chapter 16. Premature Optimization

Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Donald Knuth, “Structured Programming with go to Statements”

16.0 Introduction

Premature optimization is a big problem in the industry. Every developer is fascinated by computational complexity and the beauty of the fastest algorithms. Deciding where and when to make an optimization is one of the differences between a junior developer and a senior one. Optimizations are not free since they add a lot of accidental complexity and you must apply them very carefully. Complex solutions carry your model far away from the real world because they add many obscure layers between the model and the business objects, violating the bijection principle. They also damage readability. You should apply them only under strong factual evidence.

Computational Complexity

Computational complexity studies the resources required to solve computational problems. The most important are time and memory. It measures and compares the efficiency of algorithms and computational systems regarding these resources.

Modern artificial intelligence assistants help you optimize your code. You can become a technological ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

GitOps Cookbook

GitOps Cookbook

Natale Vinto, Alex Soto Bueno
TypeScript Cookbook

TypeScript Cookbook

Stefan Baumgartner
JavaScript Cookbook, 3rd Edition

JavaScript Cookbook, 3rd Edition

Adam D. Scott, Matthew MacDonald, Shelley Powers

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781098144715Errata Page