4 ms·

In the vast majority of situations (1) you'll prematurely optimize in the wrong place and (2) yes the profiler will point to a single, easy-to-fix smoking gun.

In the vast majority of situations (1) you'll prematurely optimize in the wrong place and (2) yes the profiler will point to a single, easy-to-fix smoking gun. Situations otherwise are the exception, rather than the rule, and it takes an expert to (1) recognize those situations and (2) know exactly how to write optimized code in that situation. That's why "don't prematurely optimize" is a good rule of thumb - because it works the majority of the time, and it takes experience to know when not to apply it.

kllrnohj 4y ago
> In the vast majority of situations [..] yes the profiler will point to a single, easy-to-fix smoking gun. [citation needed] This claim depends hugely on the industry you're actually working in and the problem space. Things like UIs & games basically never have a single, easy-to-fix smoking gun. The entire app is more or less a hotspot - be it interactive performance, startup performance, RAM usage, or general responsiveness. And once you're gone down the route of "build it first, optimize it later" you're pretty much fucked when you get to the "optimize" step because now your performance mistakes are basically unfixable without a rewrite - every layer of your architecture has issues that you can't fix without drastic overhauls. It would have been much easier to do some up-front measurements, get some guidelines in place (even if they aren't perfect), and then build the app.
osigurdson 4y ago
Suggest acquiring the needed knowledge instead of applying dogma. The true root of all evil is unexamined dogma.
- throw10920 4y ago
  This is ridiculous. If you had the knowledge, you'd apply it, and you can't acquire it without practice, which is going to involve heuristics (which you falsely call "dogma" in order to ad-hominem my argument) like this one, which exists precisely because you need something for when you don't have the specialized domain expertise. > The true root of all evil is unexamined dogma. This is so absurd that it doesn't deserve a reply.

kllrnohj 4y ago

> In the vast majority of situations [..] yes the profiler will point to a single, easy-to-fix smoking gun. [citation needed] This claim depends hugely on the industry you're actually working in and the problem space. Things like UIs & games basically never have a single, easy-to-fix smoking gun. The entire app is more or less a hotspot - be it interactive performance, startup performance, RAM usage, or general responsiveness. And once you're gone down the route of "build it first, optimize it later" you're pretty much fucked when you get to the "optimize" step because now your performance mistakes are basically unfixable without a rewrite - every layer of your architecture has issues that you can't fix without drastic overhauls. It would have been much easier to do some up-front measurements, get some guidelines in place (even if they aren't perfect), and then build the app.

osigurdson 4y ago

Suggest acquiring the needed knowledge instead of applying dogma. The true root of all evil is unexamined dogma.

throw10920 4y ago
This is ridiculous. If you had the knowledge, you'd apply it, and you can't acquire it without practice, which is going to involve heuristics (which you falsely call "dogma" in order to ad-hominem my argument) like this one, which exists precisely because you need something for when you don't have the specialized domain expertise. > The true root of all evil is unexamined dogma. This is so absurd that it doesn't deserve a reply.