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Yeah, for Google most of the code that runs when you do a search is C++. (There's a lot of backend servers that handle different things so it isn't 100%, but th
by lacker 18y ago
Yeah, for Google most of the code that runs when you do a search is C++. (There's a lot of backend servers that handle different things so it isn't 100%, but the core search engine is definitely C++.) It's not just that it's extremely micro-optimized... the general issue is that when your code is running on enough machines it's more often a good tradeoff to spend programmer time to increase performance.
- benreesman 18y agoExactly. Spending programmer time to gain some marginal improvement in CPU cycle efficiency is almost always a bad call, except when that code is going to run on a GAJILLION CPUs all of which use a lot of electricity etc. I still think that this is only the case for a tiny fraction of all the code out there (Java is f*ing fast these days), and will become less and less true with each passing year.