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40 lines
1.9 KiB
40 lines
1.9 KiB
5 years ago
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title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Optimization Is For Compilers"
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date = 2019-07-15
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "optimization"]
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Let say you need more performance on your application. You may be tempted to
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look at your code and think "How can I keep this same logic and still remove a
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few cycles, so things seem to go faster?" Well, if you want performance, you
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need to change your logic.
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<!-- more -->
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But before jumping into the code, you may have to check your compiler options.
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Maybe you're not generating the optimized version. Maybe there is an option
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that you don't use that you can remove from the compilation.
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'Cause "optimization" is what a compiler is for. They _know_ where they can
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extract most of the underlying architecture, and people have been finding ways
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to make the compiled code more performance for decades. Heck, compilers can
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even _delete_ parts of your code 'cause they can "see" that a piece of code
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will always produce the same result and, thus, isn't necessary and they will
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just put the same result where that piece of code was.
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What you need to do is to think about a better _design_ for your code, not how
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to improve the current code. And trying to trick the compiler by [messing with
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the types](/books/things-i-learnt/data-types), although may produce faster
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code, will really screw you in the future -- specially cause maintenance and
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code understanding will take long and figuring out what went wrong will always
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be harder.
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Code is written for humans to read. _ALWAYS_. Optimization is what compilers
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do. So find a smarter way to explain what you're trying to do instead of using
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shorter words or messing with that your code is saying.
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{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/use-utf8", prev_chapter_title="Always Use UTF-8 For Your Strings", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/config-file", next_chapter_title="The Config File Is Friend") }}
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