Random Thoughts on Life

Must Control Fist of Death . . .

So Tuesday I was giving a demonstration of refactoring code to reduce cyclomatic complexity. This involves taking code segments, moving them into their own procedures, and replacing the code with a call to the new procedure. A question was asked about performance because, "procedure calls are one of the more expensive functions." I distinctly remember where I first heard this and who I heard it from, it was a favorite quote from the stray cat when doing code reviews from when I first joined the company (and before he was brought into our group) 4 years ago. Back then I challenged him on it, and he admitted it really was in reference to the Data General make of computers, which our customers haven't used in 20 years! The problem simply does not apply to modern machines and compilers, and especially does not apply to our software as we are disk bound and input bound rather than computationally bound, and have always been so. What just made me see red and nearly brought out the "Fist of Death", was the person who came up with the response. Yes, it was none other than the stray cat who was the original source of the incorrect information! Gaah!

posted by MrPopman @ 2:57 PM