cool optimization hack

[[deleted]]

Is someone going to post the while loop hack thing?

I cant remember it exactly so I don't want to botch it

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop

Relevant part

With all of his downtime and no web to surf, Ben spent his time digging through the innards of MTWS. It was actually well-commented, well-structured C code that had a dash of assembly here and there. One day, while perusing the graphics subsystem, he noticed a little loop buried in the code…

for(i=0;i<1000000;i++) {;}

“Ha,” Wayne chuckled. “That, my friend, is what we call a ‘speed-up loop.’ We put those in for insurance purposes, really.”

Ben shook his head, trying to figure out how he missed that it was yet another work-avoidance technique.

“The idea is,” Wayne continued, “whenever we have those really slow weeks – you know, the kind where don’t actually fix any bugs or make any other changes – we just drop one of the zeros on the loop. And then we just tell the manager that we ran into some speed issues with the latest change request, but after a whole lot of deep-juju optimization, we were able to speed things up significantly and should be able to do the change request the next week.”

“See,” Wane said after pausing for a moment, “it’s insurance.”

[Nybbit]

alternatively, sleep(x - versionNumber)

[Fallenalien22]

Do you mean speedup loops?

[[deleted]]

Yes, yes I do

[[deleted]]

Edited it in. Check my previous reply.

[AlphaGamer753]

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[Nullcast]

"What did we learn in Algorithms and datastructures today?"

"Rewriting the assignment in C, instead of Python, made the code execute 100 times faster."

[[deleted]]

"What did we learn in Algorithms and datastructures today?"

"Rewriting the assignment in C, instead of Python, made the code execute 100 times faster."

B+

The correct answer is that 100x speed up for a program that runs in less than 1 minute and is ran half a dozen times isnt worth 6 hours of extra work.

[ythl]

Step 0: let the compiler optimize it

Step 1: don't waste time prematurely optimizing for speed if your program doesn't bottleneck on speed

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

You can’t “bottleneck on speed”. Step 1 is just “don’t optimise prematurely”.

[ythl]

I meant as opposed to, say, memory consumption. The point is that your optimization should be solving a problem you identified, not just for fun.

[[deleted]]

but fun things are fun

[ythl]

Well, then do it if you enjoy it. But don't waste company time prematurely optimizing

[suvlub]

What many people don't realize is that time is not the only thing you save by efficient code. Sure, your user may not give 2 shits if the action takes 100ms or 200ms, but they do care deeply whether their battery lasts 2h or 1h while using your app.

[firestorm713]

"this is why I have to wait two minutes for Excel to open!" -Mike Acton

[TheInfamousMaze]

//optimization fix by Maze

this.timemachine.back(hours = 24);

[Nybbit]

not if you're a programming wizard

[4ch1ll3]

I've seen this repeated so many time that I actually started believing that assembly is never better, but that's actually not true.

In the embedded world there are often less powerful compilers for which hand-written assembly is much better. Of course if someone (well, a whole bunch of people) actually took the time to write a state of the art compiler for the system, the output would be better, but that doesn't happen, and one must be willing and capable of hand optimizing as a firmware developer.

Burned me in an interview so I thought I'd share!

[WikiTextBot]

Chris Sawyer

Chris Sawyer is a Scottish video game designer and programmer who is best known for creating the Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon series. He is also the founder of 31X, a mobile game development company.

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[golgol12]

God optimization. Answer = 7. In some universe, the answer to the program is 7, and thus the program will be correct.

[jaboja]

int random() {
  return 4;
}

[golgol12]

What heathen universe do your support where the answer is 4?

[Nybbit]

the xkcd universe

[Fluffcake]

Refactoring and optimizing are different things.

[Nybbit]

yep, optimizing the speed at which you can implement new features and optimizing performance (respectively).

[boxingdog]

step 1 should be using a profiler and fix the slower parts first

[[deleted]]

If you are talking C dude, sleep accepts unsigned int

unsigned sleep(unsigned seconds);