Optimizing: things that matter

In my previous post, I explained how to optimize (broadly speaking) the initialization of a block of data.
I also mentioned that it was useless. There is at least two reasons for that:

- Initializing data can't (and shouldn't) be the costliest part of your program:
If you are doing some string processing, some computations on an array, initializing the array is unlikely the part that will require the most computer instructions. You should instead focus on optimizing your algorithms.

- do your best to never have to initialize an array to a uniform value more than once in a program's lifetime:
This may sound surprising, even unfeasible. However, if initializing happens very often in your program, then truth #1 doesn't hold anymore, and optimizing your algorithms now include optimizing the initialization: choosing an algorithm were there is no, or a very minimal need to initialize data.

This will lead us to our next article on optimizing scripting languages execution time.