December 2006
Intermediate to advanced
610 pages
22h 58m
English
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Chapter 11. THE NEED FOR SPEED
Optimizing Programs and Writing Efficient Code
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
—Mahatma Gandhi
We live in a fast food culture. Not only must our dinner arrive yesterday; our car should be fast and our entertainment instant. Our code should also run like lightning. I want my result. And I want it now.
Ironically, writing fast programs takes a long time.
Optimization is a spectre hanging over software development, as renowned computer scientist W.A. Wulf observed: “More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason—including blind stupidity.” (Wulf 72)
Optimization is a well-worn subject, on which everyone has offered their two ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.