# Optimizing optimizing: some insights that led to a 400% speedup of PowerDNS

DevFeed: [Optimizing optimizing: some insights that led to a 400% speedup of PowerDNS](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/optimizing-optimizing-some-insights-that-led-to-a-400-speedup-of-powerdns-36509.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/optimizing-optimizing-400-percent-speedup/>)

Published: 2016-09-22T12:16:31Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Bert Hubert's writings](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/bert-hubert-s-writings.md>)

Topics: [Optimization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/optimization.md>), [Benchmark](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/benchmark.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [function](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/function.md>), [exceptions](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/exceptions.md>), [stl](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/stl.md>)

Tags: [benchmark](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/benchmark.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [exceptions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/exceptions.md>), [optimization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/optimization.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [stl](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/stl.md>)

## AI overview

The article shares lessons from three decades of code optimization. It argues against broad, difficult-to-falsify rules such as avoiding exceptions, dynamic allocation, reference-counted pointers, lock-free code, or the STL, and recommends profiling real-world projects to find concrete performance bottlenecks.

## Source excerpt

So no matter how pretty your code, eventually someone will benchmark it and demand top performance. Squeezing microseconds is a very addictive and even destructive activity. It ruins your evenings, destroys your ability to converse with human beings and typically leaves your code in a mess. No programmer can escape it however: the world demands speed, or a somewhat equivalent modern measure, longer battery life. Squeezing out more performance is not just a matter of "writing better code".