Faster Together

ACCELERATOR #8

Managing Time

When building computer applications, one technique for improving performance is using what’s called a “cache.” A cache stores the data you’re most likely to need close at hand in the memory of the computer. Less important stuff is stored to the disk. There are three important principles to good caching: 1) The cache should never be completely empty or full; 2) effective caches have what you need most of the time—if they don’t, they are costing you time, not saving it; and 3) evicting unhelpful things from the cache is at least as important as adding helpful ones. The third principle is even more important when you’re near capacity.

Of course, computers are faster at calculating decisions than we are, but they’re only ...