title: When is optimisation premature?
body: <p>As Knuth said,</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>This is something which often comes up in Stack Overflow answers to questions like "which is the most efficient loop mechanism", "SQL optimisation techniques?" (<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Astackoverflow.com+%22premature+optimization%22" rel="noreferrer">and so on</a>). The standard answer to these optimisation-tips questions is to profile your code and see if it's a problem first, and if it's not, then therefore your new technique is unneeded.</p>
  
  <p>My question is, if a particular technique is different but not particularly obscure or obfuscated, can that really be considered a premature optimisation?</p>
  
  <p>Here's a related article by Randall Hyde called <em><a href="http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1513451" rel="noreferrer">The Fallacy of Premature Optimization</a></em>.</p>