Optimizing based on real-world usage patterns

Another interesting way to optimize your code is to use Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO). This optimization is actually a two-step one. In the first step, you need to compile your code with additional flags that cause the executable to gather special profiling information during runtime. You should then execute it under the expected production load. Once you're done with it, you can use the gathered data to compile the executable a second time, this time passing a different flag that instructs the compiler to use the gathered data to generate code better suited for your profile. This way, you'll end up with a binary that's prepared and tuned to your specific workload.