Software optimization

Optimization of software is making it use less time or space to do the same thing. It's a very large topic and deserves a very large article, which I don't have time to write at present; some large and important aspects of optimization follow:

• profiling to find critical parts of the software (and then optimizing those)
• using a better algorithm or data structure
• rewriting code in a lower-level language (C or assembly language are common choices)
• memoization or caching
• packed bit-fields

Some more specific tricks follow:

• loop unrolling
• loop combining
• inlining of procedures