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Programming As If Performance Mattered

Posted by simoniker on from the my-programming-can-reverse-time dept.

Junks Jerzey writes "Saw the essay 'Programming as if Performance Mattered', by James Hague, mentioned at the Lambda the Ultimate programming language weblog. This is the first modern and sensible spin on how optimization has changed over the years. The big 'gotcha' in the middle caught me by surprise. An inspiring read." Hague begins: "Are particular performance problems perennial? Can we never escape them? This essay is an attempt to look at things from a different point of view, to put performance into proper perspective."

3 of 615 comments (clear)

  1. My company by Sarojin · · Score: 0, Troll

    My company which does a good bit of open source development uses very similar methodologies to those outlined in the essay.

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  2. niche markets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    The question I ask is: will someone pay me to optimise it any more . If code runs fast enough for the spec it doesn't need optimising at all.

    Other times the whole point is optimisation. I'm about to spend months optimising audio codecs, I'll stop when it gets too hard to make further improvements. The codec is for mobile phone apps and the better I optimise the longer users batteries last.

    There are still fields where good enough really isn't good enough. The key is knowing what's the right level for your specific app.

  3. 90% of the IT industry needs to read this book by Orion+Blastar · · Score: -1, Troll

    esp the Offshore IT workers. I have seen slow and buggy Offshored code. I hope they translate that book into many different languages.

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