The answer to the question, "When should I optimize?"

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'''''Cute. Wrong, but cute.'''''

There's always someone who doesn't like cute, pithy answers because they're not 100% correct.  However, for the 99% of programmers who optimize prematurely, this is the correct answer to the question.

''I didn't say I didn't like it, I said it was wrong. Either that, or there is a stage of some projects that should be called "NotYet".''

If you aren't yet forced by some requirements to optimize (which the question "When should I optimize?" seems to imply), it is likely that the project is in the "NotYet"-stage, isn't it?

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"You have to denormalize the database and store everything as XML files" the expensive consultant said, "because this is a 'high visibility' project and performance will be crucial!!!"

"Look," I said, "according to the numbers I'm looking at, we expect a few thousand transactions '''a day''' of a few dozen records each and a required turnaround time of 60 seconds.
I think Oracle can handle it.  Where's your evidence that it won't?"

''Tell ya' what:  Let's just run it on the fraction of the data we have now, and see if it takes more than a second or two to run a transaction; then we can talk about it.''


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See also OptimizeLater.