A lot of the time, when engineers think of performance work, we think about looking at benchmarks and making the numbers smaller. We anticipate that we are benchmarking the right pieces of code, and we take it for granted that reducing some of those numbers is a benefit, but also "the root of all evil" if done …

Read More

When you design software to achieve a particular level of performance, it can be a good idea to be familiar with the general speed regimes you are working with: fundamental limitations like storage devices and networks can drive software architecture. Here are a set of common benchmark numbers that can help you anchor …

Read More

This is the second part in a 2-part series on the "Fibonacci" interview problem. We are building off of a previous post, so take a look at Part I if you haven't seen it. Previously, we examined the problem and constructed a logarithmic-time solution based on computing the power of a matrix. Now we will derive a …

Read More

Few interview problems are as notorious as the "Fibonacci" interview question. At first glance, it seems good: Most people know something about the problem, and there are several clever ways to achieve a linear time solution. Usually, in interviews, the linear time solution is the expected solution. However, the …

Read More

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog. I am an ex-Google senior engineer focused on systems programming and performance optimization. My past experience includes hardware engineering, numerical analysis, and high-frequency trading. Here, we will be talking about software engineering, performance, computer systems and …

Read More