Yes, at that point you typically get to apply far reaching architectural changes or switch out the algorithm. Sometimes it is quicker to start with just that i

Yes, at that point you typically get to apply far reaching architectural changes or switch out the algorithm. Sometimes it is quicker to start with just that instead of "polishing a turd". You can get it to be shiny but still nowhere near as shiny as gold. Hope the code is testable and reasonably easy to modify. Otherwise it's going to be a rewrite. The profile is then useful as a benchmark on real data. If you have enough time, you can turn that into a high level performance test.