Re:Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
by lallysingh on Friday December 19, 2008 @11:28PM
(#404266)
Simplest method is still the best:
Write something that works. Run it at production loads. If it's not good enough, work on it. Don't worry about speed until you hit that. Only exception is if you know N's going to be big enough to be problematic.
In that case, do just enough optimization to make it reasonable.
Why? Optimization and maintainability* are often at opposing ends. It's best to avoid the costs of it when it's not needed, and the increasing capacities of computers should make you bias towards maintainability.
* and ease of debugging, and concerns for low software complexity, and likelihood that it will be well documented, and .....
Write something that works. Run it at production loads. If it's not good enough, work on it. Don't worry about speed until you hit that. Only exception is if you know N's going to be big enough to be problematic.
In that case, do just enough optimization to make it reasonable.
Why? Optimization and maintainability* are often at opposing ends. It's best to avoid the costs of it when it's not needed, and the increasing capacities of computers should make you bias towards maintainability.
* and ease of debugging, and concerns for low software complexity, and likelihood that it will be well documented, and .....