> I have done this kind of optimization to go from 24 hour compute time to 6 hour compute time instead for instance -- per simulation run.
I'm sure there are workloads where this kind of optimization makes a lot of sense. But they are comparatively rare. And they are not for free, in terms of code complexity and robustness. So, for the broad masses reading HN, its a premature optimization.
> How can you say "a few milliseconds" when you know absolutely nothing about the context?
Most code that gets written is not performance critical. Programmers would generally be better advised to think about robustness, correctness and maintainability of their code than about cache effects. The world would be a better place and we'd see fewer app crashes and fewer security holes.
I'm sure there are workloads where this kind of optimization makes a lot of sense. But they are comparatively rare. And they are not for free, in terms of code complexity and robustness. So, for the broad masses reading HN, its a premature optimization.
> How can you say "a few milliseconds" when you know absolutely nothing about the context?
Most code that gets written is not performance critical. Programmers would generally be better advised to think about robustness, correctness and maintainability of their code than about cache effects. The world would be a better place and we'd see fewer app crashes and fewer security holes.