This article reminds me of performance advice I was starting to see in the 2000s decade. Basically it was to not introduce a bunch of pointer heavy data structures to get lower algorithmic complexity. Stuff it all into a vector. You will use some algorithms that the computer science textbook will say it's slower, but if it fits all in cache it doesn't matter. The cache misses following pointers all over town hurts you more.
I too am in the "premature optimization bad" camp.
Beyond the low-hanging fruit like ensuring you aren't creating O(n^2) complexity by accident, I think C++ is fast enough/has mature-enough compilers that by the time you're worrying about cache hits materially affecting performance, you're probably also sufficiently staffed and capitalized to pay people to A/B test that performance.
I don't know if this advice is strictly advocating to avoid premature optimization. Many problems are modeled intuitively with lots of tiny allocations and pointer heavy structures, and this advice is saying to avoid that.
I think it's more like: prioritize cache locality over big O compexity.
asveikau · · focus · HN ↗
stackghost · · focus · HN ↗
Beyond the low-hanging fruit like ensuring you aren't creating O(n^2) complexity by accident, I think C++ is fast enough/has mature-enough compilers that by the time you're worrying about cache hits materially affecting performance, you're probably also sufficiently staffed and capitalized to pay people to A/B test that performance.
asveikau · · focus · HN ↗
I think it's more like: prioritize cache locality over big O compexity.