Jeff Atwood, bolstered by Moore’s Law, points out that acquiring hardware is almost always the more cost effective solution, versus optimizing code. Here are some examples.
- Buying a bigger hard disk vs. Writing a better data compression algorithm.
- Adding an extra CPU core vs. Making the code run 50% faster.
Read his article here.
Also, the realization that code optimization can very well become an addictive obsession.
