Grace Hopper to Programmers: Mind Your Nanoseconds
highscalability.com
highscalability.com
It's like every time I hear about Grace Hopper, it's got to do with a piece of wire. Or tube. And any comments on it are usually strangely excited, almost awestruck. What's up, people? She did some other stuff too. Like, no big deal back then, writing a god damn compiler.
It's like people treat her like a dancing bear. Look, woman! Look, uniform! Look, she said "nano"! Take a step back and a deep breath. Chill out.
"Bike shed" comes to mind, in a weird way.
> Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
When programmers care about lack of efficiency before it's a problem, they're doing it wrong.
"Be mindful" is probably better advice. Tradeoffs are easier to make earlier on and everything is a compromise after all.
> When programmers care about lack of efficiency before it's a problem, they're doing it wrong.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't identify problems as quickly as possible, just don't try to improve performance when you haven't got a problem in front of you.
I sure hope someone posts the Letterman interview with her next, so I can see that to the nth as well.