Performance

For software. The idea that the programs we write should run fast.

Some important principles:

• Do not trade off safety for performance.¹
• Performance is a problem that involves everyone. More people need to care about it.²

C/C++ are both cited as performance-focused languages. This is mainly because they both run faster than comparable code in higher-level languages. The drawback of this is that it places the burden of fixing things and enforcing rules on the programmer (no garbage collector).

Sub-pages

• Profiling
• Software optimisation

Resources

• Computer, Enhance!, by Casey Muratori
• ECE454 — Computer Systems Programming
• Systems Performance, by Brendan Gregg

See also

• High-performance computing
• Responsiveness, for software that feels good

https://zeux.io/2024/05/31/justifiably-slow/ https://github.com/ashvardanian/less_slow.cpp

Footnotes

1. From Modern C, by Jens Gustedt. ↩

2. From this Tweet by Maxime Chevalier. ↩