Chapter 1

1. What is premature optimization?
   It can be defined as blindly optimizing some parts of code without having done any runtime measurements before.
2. What did Donald Knuth really say about it?
   He said that programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of non-critical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say, about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.
3. Why do we need performance optimization techniques?
   We want to decrease power consumption and enable a smooth user experience when interacting with the program.
4. Which is the worst premature pessimization you can do?
   Choosing an inefficient algorithm...