Column 9: Code Tuning
Some programmers pay too much attention to efficiency; by worrying too soon about little “optimizations” they create ruthlessly clever programs that are insidiously difficult to maintain. Others pay too little attention; they end up with beautifully structured programs that are utterly inefficient and therefore useless. Good programmers keep efficiency in context: it is just one of many problems in software, but it is sometimes very important.
Previous columns have discussed high-level approaches to efficiency: problem definition, system structure, algorithm design and data structure selection. This column is about a low-level approach. “Code tuning” locates the expensive parts of an existing program and then makes little ...
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