3 ms·
> Do Low-Level Optimizations Matter? 1. They matter a _lot_. 2. (Mentioned but not covered in the article) adaptation to known features of your input distribu
by einpoklum 5y ago
> Do Low-Level Optimizations Matter?
1. They matter a _lot_.
2. (Mentioned but not covered in the article) adaptation to known features of your input distribution also matters a lot.
- ncmncm 5y agoThey matter to the degree a factor-of-two in performance (or -of-ten, or -of-100, for other optimizations) matters. On most problems, for most people, that matters not at all. But there are people who pay a lot of money for smaller gains. Certain people make a lot of money delivering gains. Often, it didn't matter before, and now does. Facebook was coded in PHP, so they obviously didn't care about performance when they wrote it. But now Facebook is stuck with millions of lines of PHP, and has people going to crazy lengths to get it a few percent faster.