💾 Archived View for gemini.susa.net › rob_pike_five_prog_rules.gmi captured on 2023-07-10 at 13:58:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming

These turned up on HN, and they resonate with my approach to doing stuff in Gemini. Brute force, mostly Bash, simple code. These rules are particularly relevant in our plain-text world. Our processing power is many orders of magnitude greated than when these tools and techniques were first developed, and they were still useful back then.

So, always keep in mind that our audience on Gemini is small and will probably remain relatively small. Even an entry level VPS will likely outpace even the most unoptimised code. Don't worry about performance, don't worry about bots.

The Rules

Rule 1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is.

Rule 2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.

Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)

Rule 4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.

Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." Ken Thompson rephrased Pike's rules 3 and 4 as "When in doubt, use brute force.". Rules 3 and 4 are instances of the design philosophy KISS. Rule 5 was previously stated by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. Rule 5 is often shortened to "write stupid code that uses smart objects".