[wp-hackers] Is WP_INSTALLING constant here to stay?

[Otto]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Dino Termini <dino at duechiacchiere.it> wrote:
> is it better to load 30Mb+ of stuff or just 'reinvent the wheel'
> (i.e. build a small library that replicates some of the basic wpdb
> functionality, like prepare and query) and use just 50Kb of memory on the
> user's server?


If this is a custom-one-off thing for a specific site and setup, do
what you like.

But if not, then don't assume that you know the user's server,
configuration, site layout, etc.

If this is a generic plugin meant to be used by anybody, then you have
no idea how the server is configured. One of my setups wouldn't be
pulling any extra 30M of memory, or indeed even reading WordPress's
files again from the disk. APC Opcode Caching is pretty cool.

There's nothing wrong with optimizing away performance issues, but
when you start doing so before you know what the performance issues
actually are, and letting that affect your initial design, then you're
taking the wrong approach. Premature optimization is the root of all
evil.

-Otto