Reducing the complexity

Before we dig further into optimization techniques, let's define exactly what we are going to deal with. From the chapter's introduction, we know that focusing on improving application bottlenecks is critical for successful optimization. A bottleneck is a single component that severely limits the capacity of a program or computer system. An important characteristic of every piece of code with performance issues is that it usually has only a single bottleneck. We discussed some profiling techniques in the previous chapter, so you should already be familiar with the tools required to locate and isolate such places. If your profiling results show that there are few places that need immediate improvement, then you should at first try to treat each as a separate component and optimize independently.

Of course, if there is no explicit bottleneck but your application still performs under your expectations, then you are really in a bad position. The gains of the optimization...