Premature optimization is the root of all evil "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" I would like to translate this quote into Japanese for a personal project. For further understanding of the meaning, Donald Knuth wrote this phrase in 1974, see < context: > We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil Google translate gave me but I'm not confident on it's correctness, and it seems a bit long?

I think in this rare case, Google translate provides a spot-on translation. I would translate the whole sentence as

> We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
> 97%

_Translation notes:_ I just translated "say about" as . The "say" here should really be something like or, as Hyperworm suggested, , but I thought that the resulting tone would be a bit too conversational, which is not really the case in English.