After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. On the other hand, a stitch in time saves nine. On the third hand, a penny saved is a penny earned. Or maybe that was the fourth hand.
The OP has his reasons for asking the question, and as some other commenters have shown, it's a good jumping-off point for discussion of how to reason about different collections of data indexed in different ways. Given that the OP could have written both approaches, benchmarked them, and chosen whichever came out best in about 10 minutes, I don't see "a lot of time" being "wasted." | [reply] |
Given that the OP could have written both approaches, benchmarked them, and chosen whichever came out best in about 10 minutes ...
Actually it's likely that the OP couldn't do that. He spent more time than that writing up the question then waited most of an hour for the first answer. So it looks like a 10 minute fix wasn't available and there's the first hour wasted.
But the advice doesn't pertain to just this single question or to just the OP. As a general thing write code for clarity first then tweak for speed if you need to. Most often scripts are plenty fast enough as first written. If they're not fast enough then profiling is a better first step than guessing and benchmarking. Often the answer to speed problems is found in a different high level approach than low level tweaking in any case. Tweaking may get a factor of two speed improvement. Finding a better algorithm can get orders of magnitude speed improvements.
So, pick your battles and don't sweat the small stuff.
True laziness is hard work
| [reply] |
So, pick your battles and don't sweat the small stuff.
For want of a nail...
You write some garbage that's "fast enough" for you, then the next guy writes some garbage on top of yours that's "fast enough" to collect his paycheck, etc. Eventually some poor schlub has a program that runs forever, benchmarks it to find a flat profile, tries to fix your stuff, and finds layer on layer of "good enough" design.
If you think a bit and write something decent, other people will be able to reuse your code. However, if you generate garbage, some poor fool will just have to rewrite it later. "Whatever you thought of first" and "whatever seems clear to you" are not necessarily decent.
| [reply] |
