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Well no ... premature optimization is something else. When you start a project - you make some assumptions about load, shape whatever. Optimizing based on these assumptions before being validated by the real world testing is sub optimal. You don't know where the bottlenecks will be, or how users will interact with your software.

Premature optimization includes both what you describe and what the GP talks about. Adopting the general rule, "No optimization without quantification" helps in all cases: validate those assumptions early in the design process (with prototypes, user observations, whatever) and with regard to optimization of code later on, profile it intelligently to identify bottlenecks, don't just assume the issue arise from what seem like the obvious culprits.

I, too, am not a fan of blog posts without dates. The archive view suggests it's new: http://danluu.com/blog/archives/

I found the date on the RSS feed (2015-3-5 21:54).