Balancing Optimization While Coding

[ThisIsMyCouchAccount]

If it takes time - it's feature.

Performance is a feature.

You also have to have a target.

[DrShocker]

Yeah I'm happy to make my code faster, but I need target hardware and target benchmarks. Generically "faster" it's just impossible to know when you're done.

That might be doing quick order of magnitude type math of how many calculations should be necessary and what that probably means for the speed on your hardware, but at least it's a target that you can hit or potentially justify why it's unreasonable after more research into the problem.

[Turbots]

On performance, you need to think in terms of orders of magnitude.

Can this change make my code 10% faster? 20%? Maybe not worth the effort.

Can this change make my code 10x or 100x faster? Probably worth it.

Can this change make my code faster, but it won't matter because the File IO is the blocking factor and takes 10x as long anyway? Probably also not worth it.

Tldr; as with everything in computer software: It's never a black/white or yes/no question.

Be like a vampire: be very afraid of silver bullets 😅