Fast Hints Checkpoint

Estimation, measurement, memory layout, and avoiding unnecessary work.

1. The biggest performance gains usually come from:

Algorithmic improvements Renaming variables Adding more logging Inlining every function

2. A bulk API is helpful because it:

Amortizes per-call overhead and enables batching Forces every caller to allocate more memory Prevents caching Requires thread-safe wrappers

3. Why reduce allocations on hot paths?

Allocations cost time and hurt cache locality Allocations always improve performance Allocations reduce code size Allocations are free in garbage-collected languages

4. Define a fast path.

5. If a profile is flat, a good next step is to:

Look for higher-level changes and many small wins Stop measuring and guess Only micro-optimize the smallest function Remove all tests

6. Which approach helps reduce lock contention?

Sharding shared state Adding a single global lock Holding locks across I/O Increasing logging inside locks

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