Java theory and practice: Anatomy of a flawed microbenchmark

Java theory and practice: Anatomy of a flawed microbenchmark: "Is there any other kind?

Java theory and practice: Anatomy of a flawed microbenchmark

Level: Advanced

Brian Goetz (brian@quiotix.com)
Principal Consultant, Quiotix
22 Feb 2005

Column icon Software engineers are notoriously obsessed, sometimes excessively, with performance. While sometimes performance is the most important requirement in a software project, as it might be when developing protocol routing software for a high-speed switch, most of the time performance needs to be balanced against other requirements, such as functionality, reliability, maintainability, extensibility, time to market, and other business and engineering considerations. In this month's Java theory and practice, columnist Brian Goetz explores why it is so much harder to measure the performance of Java language constructs than it looks."