Understanding Software Dynamics

Chapter 30

Recap

Here we are: the last chapter. What have you learned, and what might you do next?

30.1 What You Learned

In Part I, “Measurement,” you learned to make informed estimates of how long a piece of code should take. Your careful measurements of CPU, memory, disk, and network activity inform those estimates. Estimates give you some idea of what to expect when you observe the actual behavior of a program. When the estimated and actual performance differ, there is always something to learn—why your estimate was unrealistic, why the program is slower (or faster) than it should be, or a little of each.

Along the way, you learned a little more about how modern complex processor chips work and how they interact with operating systems and ...