[armon]

The article can probably be succinctly summarized as "Premature optimization is the root of all evil". Most of the authors points are valid, in that caching adds more complexity.

That said, caching is absolutely critical to almost every piece of software ever. Even if you explicitly caching isn't used, a wide variety of caches are likely still being depending upon including CPU caching (L1, L2, L3), OS filesystem caching, DNS caching, ARP caching, etc etc.

Caching certainly adds complexity but it's also one of the best patterns for solving a wide range of performance problems. I would recommend developers spend more time learning and understanding the complexities so that they can make use of caching correctly and without applying it as a premature optimization.

[TheLoneWolfling]

What bugs me is not so much caching as redundant caching.

I've seen applications that have 5 redundant caches, if not more (on-disk cache, OS cache, VM OS cache, stdlib cache, programmer-visible cache). And then you end up killing the actually-important caches (CPU caches, etc) from the amount of redundant copying required...