The Performance of Open Source Applications
Armstrong, Tavish
In 1974, Donald Knuth wrote, "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97%% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." With computers available now that are millions of times faster than those available then, today's programmers have even less reason to worry about shaving cycles and saving bytes than those a generation ago. But "less" isn't "none": every once in a while, squeezing the last ounce of performance o...