Top all-time · #25666
Hans Gerwitz
Personal blog · hans.gerwitz.com · on HN as gerwitzprogrammingwriting
Hans Gerwitz's personal blog at hans.gerwitz.com covers programming and writing. Since 2011, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this post to trace the origin of the "premature optimization" quote, which commenters attribute to Knuth, Hoare, or Dijkstra. Comments cite it as a source for the attribution.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Nerd with opinions
What Hacker News says?
I just learned of Placekitten and had to drop everything and write bookmarklets: http://hans.gerwitz.com/projects/placekitten.html I didn't know about Kittenify, but they have better code. Though Placekitten has nicely curated images. A marriage is inevitable.
Comment linking /projects/placekitten.html
on “Pictures of kittens for use as placeholders in your designs or code”Slide incorrectly attributes the "premature optimization" quote to Hoare, but it's Knuth's. http://hans.gerwitz.com/2004/08/12/premature-optimization-is...
Comment linking /2004/08/12/premature-optimization-is-the-root-of-all-evil.html
on “Profiling Go Programs”Hoare attributed it to Dijkstra. See https://hans.gerwitz.com/2004/08/12/premature-optimization-i... . "I’m sorry I have no recollection how this quotation came about. I might have attributed it to Edsger Dijkstra."
Comment linking /2004/08/12/premature-optimization-is-the-root-of-all-evil.html
on “Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming”