Performance vs. Laziness – Why Use Setters from Within a Class?

insert premature-discussion-is-the-root-of-all-evil lecture

That said, here are some habits I've gotten into to avoid unnecessary efficiency, and in some cases, make my code simpler and more correct as well.

This isn't a discussion of general principles, but of some things to be aware of to avoid introducing unnecessary inefficiencies into code.

Know your big-O

This should probably be merged into the lengthy discussion above. It's pretty much common sense that a loop inside of a loop, where the inner loop repeats a calculation, is gonna be slower. For example:

for (i = 0; i < strlen(str); i++) {
    ...
}

This will take a horrendous amount of time if the string is really long, because the length is being recalculated on every iteration of the loop. Note that GCC actually optimizes this case because strlen() is marked as a pure function.

When sorting a million 32-bit integers, bubble sort would be the wrong way to go. In general, sorting can be done in O(n * log n) time (or better, in the case of radix sort), so unless you know your data is going to be small, look for an algorithm that's at least O(n * log n).

Likewise, when dealing with databases, be aware of indexes. If you SELECT * FROM people WHERE age = 20, and you don't have an index on people(age), it'll require an O(n) sequential scan rather than a much faster O(log n) index scan.

Integer arithmetic hierarchy

When programming in C, bear in mind that some arithmetic operations are more expensive than others. For integers, the hierarchy goes something like this (least expensive first):

• + - ~ & | ^
• << >>
• *
• /

Granted, the compiler will usually optimize things like n / 2 to n >> 1 automatically if you're targeting a mainstream computer, but if you're targeting an embedded device, you might not get that luxury.

Also, % 2 and & 1 have different semantics. Division and modulus usually rounds toward zero, but it's implementation defined. Good ol' >> and & always rounds toward negative infinity, which (in my opinion) makes a lot more sense. For instance, on my computer:

printf("%d\n", -1 % 2); // -1 (maybe)
printf("%d\n", -1 & 1); // 1

Hence, use what makes sense. Don't think you're being a good boy by using % 2 when you were originally going to write & 1.

Expensive floating point operations

Avoid heavy floating point operations like pow() and log() in code that doesn't really need them, especially when dealing with integers. Take, for example, reading a number:

int parseInt(const char *str)
{
    const char *p;
    int         digits;
    int         number;
    int         position;

    // Count the number of digits
    for (p = str; isdigit(*p); p++)
        {}
    digits = p - str;

    // Sum the digits, multiplying them by their respective power of 10.
    number = 0;
    position = digits - 1;
    for (p = str; isdigit(*p); p++, position--)
        number += (*p - '0') * pow(10, position);

    return number;
}

Not only is this use of pow() (and the int<->double conversions needed to use it) rather expensive, but it creates an opportunity for precision loss (incidentally, the code above doesn't have precision issues). That's why I wince when I see this type of function used in a non-mathematical context.

Also, notice how the "clever" algorithm below, which multiplies by 10 on each iteration, is actually more concise than the code above:

int parseInt(const char *str)
{
    const char *p;
    int         number;

    number = 0;
    for (p = str; isdigit(*p); p++) {
        number *= 10;
        number += *p - '0';
    }

    return number;
}

No, no, no, you can't separate something that is intrinsically a part of the job.

Let programmers code any crap that makes all tests tick green and than tell the other team to rewrite everything to make it also work fast? Doesn't work that way.

It is a job of the same programmer who writes the code to also think about performance. If you free them of that obligation, what would motivate them to learn and make things better each time?

Having said that, there is a career path if you choose to specialize in performance tuning. But it's not like a daily job, it is rather you offering your consulting services to various clients to help with their performance issues. But obviously to be able to do that you must already have passed beyond being able to write just working code and have gained insight into how make working code a fast code.