rules_of_programming.md (1003B)
1 # Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming 2 3 ## Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming 4 5 Rule 1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks 6 occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack 7 until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is. 8 9 Rule 2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't 10 unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest. 11 12 Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy 13 algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be 14 big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.) 15 16 Rule 4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder 17 to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures. 18 19 Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized 20 things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, 21 not algorithms, are central to programming.