On: News.YC Faster

[ivankirigin]

I'm surprised no one has asked yet: Why is it faster?

[jgrahamc → ivankirigin]

Because Paul Graham woke up this morning and said, "news.yc is 50% faster. And Paul looked upon the site and saw that it was Good"

[imsteve → jgrahamc]

The pages load for pg before he even clicks the links.

[pg → ivankirigin]

I changed some things about the way Arc handles strings.

[henning → pg]

Do I detect premature optimization?

[brlewis → henning]

Arc is a language implementation, not an application.

Optimization of language implementations is arguably never premature. When such an optimization translates to an application speedup, it's indisputably not premature.

[gruseom → henning]

"Premature optimization" has become a mantra for not thinking about performance at all. If users notice it, it's not premature.