Following some of the "backlash" of Google posting their "performance tips" for PHP developers, Marco Tabini has written up a post with a suggestion of his own - stop teaching developers how to optimize their code and teach them how to code it better from the start.

In principle, I have nothing against micro-optimizations; I just think they're a waste of time - perhaps even more so because they take the focus away from the simple fact that it's a rare performance problem that is cause by the language: the problem, almost inevitably, resides either with the developer, or with an external system.

He explains that it's no so much about dropping them all together as it is starting from the beginning and teaching best practices and good use of standards and proper development practices. That's what we should be promoting, not things that might shave milliseconds off the total execution time.