Jul 24“If you’re really good at software performance engineering you’re only wrong about 95% of the time”If you’re not good, it’s worse. This is one of my favorite aphorisms and I throw it in every time I teach performance engineering to people. I didn’t do an actual study to get an exact number — obviously — it’s just supposed to come off the tongue easily. But…Software Performance8 min read
Jul 12Hard and Soft Mode Debugging or The Woes of Soft Mode[I’m moving some my more interesting old blogs from web archive to someplace they can actually be found. Keep in mind these were written a lot time ago.] 08/22/2008 I had to explain this a little while ago and I wrote up something that I thought was generally interesting. …5 min read
Jul 12A Few Good (Performance) Men[This bit of parody is often requested so I’m reposting it] Originally posted Thursday, June 09, 2005 2:57 PM ; recovered from the Wayback Machine Sometimes people ask me why my talks tend to teach the basics about performance and not Really Scary Performance Stuff (TM). My answer is actually…Software Performance2 min read
May 31Testing and InstrumentationLast week Charity Majors wrote a series of tweets about testing software. The general thesis being: you can easily hit diminishing returns in testing, and people often over-invest there are so many combinations it’s just not at all feasible to prevent all your problems with testing therefore, you should really…Software Development7 min read
Apr 17Designing for Performance[I’m moving some my more interesting old blogs from web archive to someplace they can actually be found. Keep in mind these were written a lot time ago.] 12/12/2003 I wrote this article back in July [of 2003] and it ended up being the basis of this video (scroll to…8 min read
Apr 17Mid-life crisis (For Garbage Collectors)[I’m moving some my more interesting old blogs from web archive to someplace they can actually be found. Keep in mind these were written a lot time ago.] 12/04/2003 This particular problem (I call it mid-life-crisis) seems to come up fairly often so I thought I’d write up some general…4 min read
Apr 17Bad Analysis Worse Than None[I’m moving some my more interesting old blogs from web archive to someplace they can actually be found. Keep in mind these were written a lot time ago.] 02/17/2004 Once again I’ll begin by saying that I’m simplifying the below in the interest of not writing a novel, so please…6 min read
Apr 17Common Sources of Processor Performance Penalties: Five Issues[I’m moving some my more interesting old blogs from web archive to someplace they can actually be found. Keep in mind these were written a lot time ago.] 03/01/2005 Modern processors run at incredibly high clock rates and can often execute multiple instructions concurrently. When things are going perfectly these…9 min read
Apr 17Giving your customers a good deal[I’m moving some my more interesting old blogs from web archive to someplace they can actually be found. Keep in mind these were written a lot time ago.] 03/21/2005 Earlier today someone suggested that I read this entry from Cyrus. As a performance guy people basically expect me to veto…1 min read
Apr 17Fat Free Bytes? Not here![I’m moving some my more interesting old blogs from web archive to someplace they can actually be found. Keep in mind these were written a lot time ago.] 04/06/2005 I’m going to have a little bit of fun with this one so bear with me. :) Sometimes I talk to…2 min read