The Best and Worst Ways to Optimize Your Code

An excerpt from the below article is as below:

"There are some dreadful ways of making code trying to make code run fast. The worst mistake is to write your code in a machine-Friendly-human –unfriendly way, an art beloved of a few Perl programmers. Another bad idea is to compromise a good Object-oriented model in pursuit of small savings in Garbage-collection, a process equivalent to the sin of de-normalisation. It is programming without all your faculties, blind to what is going on and, even worse, without the faculty of thought."

http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/tony_davis/archive/2008/04/16/47585.aspx