Question

I have a variable that gets read and updated thousands of times a second. It needs to be reset regularly. But “half” the time, the value is already the reset value. Is it a good idea to check the value first (to see if it needs resetting) before resetting (a write operaion), or I should just reset it regardless? The main goal is to optimize the code for performance.

To illustrate:

Random r = new Random();
int val = Integer.MAX_VALUE;

for (int i=0; i<100000000; i++) {
    if (i % 2 == 0)
        val = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
    else
        val = r.nextInt();

    if (val != Integer.MAX_VALUE) //skip check?
        val = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
}

I tried to use the above program to test the 2 scenarios (by un/commenting the 2nd “if” line), but any difference is masked by the natural variance of the run duration time.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Don’t check it.

It’s more execution steps = more cycles = more time.

As an aside, you are breaking one of the basic software golden rules: “Don’t optimise early”. Unless you have hard evidence that this piece if code is a performance problem, you shouldn’t be looking at it. (Note that doesn’t mean you code without performance in mind, you still follow normal best practice, but you don’t add any special code whose only purpose is “performance related”)