Thursday, August 03, 2006

Use the tool, tool part 4

If you've written some unit tests, the next thing to find out is how much of your code is covered, since you want to get as close to 100% as possible. This is where AQTime comes in. This profiler does all kinds of profiling but the coverage profiler is what you'll want to use here. AQTime may cost quite a bit of cash but it's worth every penny. Another use of AQTime is to track down performance problems. If I have a performance issue in some code, the first thing I do is turn to AQTime. Some people will think about what is causing their performance problems, but frankly what's the point? The theories they come up with are invariably wrong, because more often than not, the actual problem is caused by some poorly implemented algorithm, that manual analysis completely missed. Performance analysis should always be undertaken with the help of a profiler, since not only will it tell you the cause of the problem, but will also tell you exactly how much time you'll save by fixing it.

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