1. The sharing of ideas allows us to stand on one another’s shoulders instead of on one another’s feet Jim Warren

2. There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses Bjarne Stroustrup

3. Rules of Optimization Rule 1: Don’t do it. Rule 2 (for experts only): Don’t do it yet. M.A. Jackson

4. If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a protected abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor and when was the last time you needed one? Tom Cargill

5. Only optimize where it matters Mike Abrash

6. If your project doesn’t work, look for the part that you didn’t think was important Arthur Bloch

7. When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb Steve Halflich

8. Any performance problem can be solved by removing a level of indirection Mike Haertel

9. The best is the enemy of the good Voltaire

10. Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live Martin Golding

11. Premature optimization is the root of all evil C.A.R. Hoare

12. On the other hand, we cannot ignore efficiency Jon Bentley

13. C++ is an atrocity, the bletcherous scab of the computing world, responsible for... more mysterious failures than any other computer language in the history of the planet earth Eric Lee Green

14. Efficiency must be kept in mind throughout the design and implementation effort Bjarne Stroustrup

15. The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases Jon Bentley

16. If C++ has taught me one thing, it’s this: just because the system is consistent doesn’t mean it’s not the work of Satan Andrew Plotkin

17. Simplicity is the soul of efficiency Austin Freeman

18. There are only two things wrong with C++: the initial concept and the implementation Bertrand Meyer

19. Never put off until runtime what can be done at compile time A. Glew

20. The speed of a non-working program is irrelevant Stephen Heller

21. Code should run as fast as necessary, but no faster; something important is always traded away to increase speed Richard Pattis

22. Fancy algorithms are slow when N is small, and N is usually small Rob Pike

23. Of course the code works. It just compiled, didn’t it? helixcode123, on slashdot

24. When in doubt, use brute force Butler Lampson

25. I saw ‘cout’ being shifted “Hello world” times to the left and stopped right there Steve Gonedes