hans.gerwitz

“Premature opti­mization is the root of all evil.” is a popular quote with myste­rious origins. It is widely attributed to Donald Knuth, who appar­ently used it in Structured Program with goto Statements but later credits Tony Hoare.

Hoare, however, did not claim it when I queried him in January of 2004:

Dear Hans,

I’m sorry I have no recol­lection how this quotation came about.? I might have attributed it to Edsger Dijkstra.

I think it would be fair for you assume it is common culture or folklore.

Tony.

Bruce Eckel also credits Dijkstra. Now that would be ironic, since the widely-​​attributed first use by Knuth was written as a rebuttal to Dijkstra’s Go To Statement Considered Harmful.