You can read a nice interview with my friend Heinz Kabutz.

The bits about doing timing for various code approaches reminded me of my early days in teaching C/C++ and doing various compares.

Though these are “micro” performance numbers, there are a couple of key points to take away:

• You have to measure that which you wish to improve
• Don’t lose sight of the big picture — clear code is far superior to overly optimized and obtuse code
• Big performance gains for a major system typically come from architectural decisions, not micro-code

Thanks Heinz!