Micro-optimization is the process of meticulous tuning of small sections of code in order to address a perceived deficiency in some aspect of its operation (excessive memory usage, poor performance, etc).
Micro-optimization is the process of meticulous tuning of small sections of code in order to address a perceived deficiency in some aspect of its operation (excessive memory usage, poor performance, etc).
Micro-optimization (and optimization in general) tends to be interesting to programmers because they enjoy finding clever solutions to problems. However, micro-optimization carries the connotation of a disproportionate amount of effort being expended to extract relatively small improvements.
That's not to say that micro-optimization is bad practice in all circumstances. Sometimes a small improvement in a part of a code base that gets used frequently (such as the innermost part of a loop) can yield big overall gains in system performance, and building code for highly constrained systems such as microcontrollers will often require cleverness to eke out the most performance from such a small system.
However, it can be tempting to indulge in the practice where it's not necessary, resulting in a lot of time being spent that could have been used more productively, and in code that is difficult to follow as "clever" solutions to problems are often more difficult to understand than simple solutions, and therefore a micro-optimization can have a negative impact on the maintainability of a piece of code.
Programmers are advised to avoid micro-optimization, unless they can make a solid justification for the problems outlined above being worth the performance gains. Should profiling of the code in question identify a hot-spot that is causing a performance bottleneck, then this can be sufficient justification for a micro-optimization.
