Programming as if Performance Mattered, by James Hague [2004-04-04] - 3 views
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I frequently see bare queries from programmers in discussion forums, especially from new programmers, who are worried about performance. These worries often stem from popular notions about what operations are "slow." Division. Square roots. Mispredicted branches. Cache unfriendly data structures.
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Inevitably someone chimes in that making out-of-context assumptions, especially without profiling, is a bad idea. And they're right.
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The golden rule of programming has always been that clarity and correctness matter much more than the utmost speed. Very few people will argue with that. And yet do we really believe it? If we did, then 99% of all programs would be written in something like Python. Or Erlang.
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« I frequently see bare queries from programmers in discussion forums, especially from new programmers, who are worried about performance. These worries often stem from popular notions about what operations are "slow." Division. Square roots. Mispredicted branches. Cache unfriendly data structures. »