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    Mike, one day you and I are going to have to write a book on sampled profiling together; it will be the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" of performance programming. Commented Jun 22, 2011 at 2:44
  • @Crashworks: That would be fun. If you're serious, drop me a line. Commented Jun 22, 2011 at 2:50
  • @Mike Sure, but later in the summer, I think -- I've got a huge backlog of articles and papers I already owe to GDC, #AltDevBlogADay, and my own employer! Commented Jun 22, 2011 at 4:57
  • I agree in general. But despite misuse by people that don't even think about computational complexity, alone actual performance, sayings like "premature optimization is the root of all evil" (everyone who ever cites this should read the full version) and the 90/10 rule don't say "don't optimize" but "optimize efficently". Nobody gets anything from shaving a millisecond off initialization code; writing code with the intent to make every single line as performant as possible just leads to an unmaintainable mess that distracts from finding solving the relevant performance problems, etc. Commented Jun 22, 2011 at 14:28
  • @delnan: The first time I remember using random-pausing is around '78, on a Raytheon mini with "halt" and "step" panel buttons. I don't remember ever thinking there was any other way to do it. So, while big-O matters, it mystifies me how people can even discuss optimization in real software without first having the program itself tell them where to concentrate. Commented Jun 22, 2011 at 16:41