Optimizing Code

Posted by Claudiu on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Claudiu
Published on 2008-11-28T08:44:39Z Indexed on 2010/05/23 8:00 UTC
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Performance

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language-agnostic

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optimization

You are given a heap of code in your favorite language which combines to form a rather complicated application. It runs rather slowly, and your boss has asked you to optimize it. What are the steps you follow to most efficiently optimize the code?

What strategies have you found to be unsuccessful when optimizing code?

Re-writes: At what point do you decide to stop optimizing and say "This is as fast as it'll get without a complete re-write." In what cases would you advocate a simple complete re-write anyway? How would you go about designing it?

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