Monitoring performance and resource usage

Before we can improve the performance of any code, we need to be able to monitor its speed and efficiency to record a baseline that we can then measure improvements against.

Evaluating the efficiency of types

What is the best type to use for a scenario? To answer this question, we need to carefully consider what we mean by “best,” and through this, we should consider the following factors:

• Functionality: This can be decided by checking whether the type provides the features you need.
• Memory size: This can be decided by the number of bytes of memory the type takes up.
• Performance: This can be decided by how fast the type is.
• Future needs: This depends on the changes in requirements and maintainability.

There will be scenarios, such as when storing numbers, where multiple types have the same functionality, so we will need to consider memory and performance to make a choice.

If we...