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Code Profiling in C++ — Optimizing Performance Like a Pro
Instead of finding how to make it fast, find what makes it slow
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In modern software development, especially in high performance real-time applications, like game development, high-frequency trading and embedded systems, writing code that works is just the beginning. Bottlenecks, memory leaks and hotspots generally bog the system down by a lot, and sometimes just renders the code unusable. This is where code optimization, debugging and profiling comes in. In this article, we’ll be focusing primarily on what code profiling is, why it matters, the tools and techniques available, and a dummy example you can use when you are working with a very small code base.
What is code profiling?
Code profiling is the process of analyzing a program to measure its performance in terms of execution time, memory usage, function calls, and other metrics. This helps us identify:
- Hotspots — functions and code blocks that consume the most CPU time
- Frequency — functions with an abnormal amount of recursive calls
- Inefficient Memory Usage —…