jducoeur: (Default)
jducoeur ([personal profile] jducoeur) wrote2015-01-09 09:17 am
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Computer term of the day

Heisenprofiling, verb: wasting unnecessary time trying to figure out why your inner loops are still running slowly after optimization, only to realize that it's because the profiler hooks are slowing it down...

[identity profile] goldsquare.livejournal.com 2015-01-09 02:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Years ago, with insufficient experience, I was trying to debug a device-driver problem. I used printfs. Stupid.

Eventually I created an in-memory array, updated that with integer data which corresponded to information I wanted, and that was "fast enough" to expose the issue.

Many years later, on a Connection Machine, we discovered that asking for the current day/date would bring all processors to a screeching halt while the system propagated the correct date/time to every processor. Also while trying to profile behavior and performance.

It's not easy.