Performance surprises are everywhere - even in the simplest code 🚀
At my old bank job, I discovered something eye-opening: for some requests, our code spent more time logging than doing the actual mathematical calculations and data loading combined.
The culprit? Our timestamp formatting was using a custom format string, and our internal datetime library was invoking an expensive parser to read that format on every single call. A simple refactor into a separate, compiler-optimized function solved it instantly.
Note to my old colleagues: don’t worry, I fixed this before I left! 😄
This reminds me of Matt Godbolt’s talk in which he optimized order formatting from 515 nanoseconds down to 13 nanoseconds. His journey from C++ streams (with unexpected dynamic_cast overhead) to custom ASCII conversion routines is a masterclass in performance analysis.
Key takeaway: Never assume operations are “simple” or constant time. Profile first, optimize second. The bottleneck is rarely where you think it is.
#Performance
#SoftwareEngineering
#Programming
#Optimization
#FinTech
Crossposted at LinkedIn