this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Programming

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How often does branchless programming actually matter? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by firelizzard@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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I've started noticing articles and YouTube videos touting the benefits of branchless programming, making it sound like this is a hot new technique (or maybe a hot old technique) that everyone should be using. But it seems like it's only really applicable to data processing applications (as opposed to general programming) and there are very few times in my career where I've needed to use, much less optimize, data processing code. And when I do, I use someone else's library.

How often does branchless programming actually matter in the day to day life of an average developer?

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[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Code readability is often way more important

This. 100% this. The only thing more important than readability is whether it actually works. If you can't read it, you can't maintain it. The only exception is throw away scripts I'm only going to use a few times. My problem is that what I find readable and what the other developers find readable are not the same.

I’d say, being able to identify bottlenecks is what really matters, because it’s what will eventually lead you to the hot loop you’ll want to optimize.

I love Go. I can modify a program to activate the built-in profiler, or throw the code in a benchmark function and use the tool chain to profile it, then have it render a flame graph that shows me exactly where the CPU is spending its time and/or what calls are allocating. It makes it so easy (most of the time) to identify bottlenecks.