Epilogue

“We have come a long way. Nine chapters stuffed with code is a lot to negotiate. If you didn’t assimilate all of it the first time through, don’t worry—you weren’t really expected to. Even the best of code takes time to absorb, and you seldom grasp all the implications until you try to use and modify the program. Much of what you learn about programming comes only from working with the code: reading, revising and rereading.”

From the Epilogue of Software Tools [Kernighan and Plauger 1976].

“In fact, this RFC will argue that modularity is one of the chief villains in attempting to obtain good performance, so that the designer is faced with a delicate and inevitable tradeoff between good structure and good performance.” ...

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