The attribution to Hoare is a common error — "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" first appeared in Knuth's 1974 paper "Structured Programming with

The attribution to Hoare is a common error — "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" first appeared in Knuth's 1974 paper "Structured Programming with go to Statements." Knuth later attributed it to Hoare, but Hoare said he had no recollection of it and suggested it might have been Dijkstra. Rule 5 aged the best. "Data dominates" is the lesson every senior engineer eventually learns the hard way.