Chapter 24
Writing Efficient C++
WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?
- What “efficiency” and “performance” mean
- What kind of language-level optimizations you can use
- Which design-level guidelines you can follow to design efficient programs
- What profiling tools are
The efficiency of your programs is important regardless of your application domain. If your product competes with others in the marketplace, speed can be a major differentiator: Given the choice between a slower and a faster program, which one would you choose? No one would buy an operating system that takes two weeks to boot up, unless it was the only option. Even if you don’t intend to sell your products, they will have users. Those users will not be happy with you if they end up wasting time waiting for your programs to complete tasks.
Now that you understand the concepts of Professional C++ design and coding, and have tackled some of the more complex facilities that the language provides, you are ready to incorporate performance into your programs. Writing efficient programs involves thought at the design level, as well as details at the implementation level. Although this chapter falls late in this book, remember to consider performance from the beginning of your program life cycle.
OVERVIEW OF PERFORMANCE AND EFFICIENCY
Before delving further into the details, it’s helpful to define the terms performance and efficiency, as used in this book. The performance of a program can refer to several areas, such as speed, memory usage, ...
