developerWorks: Speed, Size, and Maintenance

“It probably isn’t much comfort, at this point, for me to let
you in on a little secret: Design is everything and the rest is
just plain work. The key elements of any software project are
created in the design. If the software is poorly designed, there’s
very little you can do to make it better. At best, you can hold
your breath and hope you haven’t committed any drastic errors.

“On the upside, good design techniques can be learned, and
applying them will absolutely improve your results. Along with
requirements gathering, optimization is one of the foundations of
good design. By carefully defining the most important elements of
your application and then tailoring both the architecture and the
underlying code to support those elements, you can build
applications that deliver the results you want. For instance, you
can optimize your applications for speed; thus avoiding a scenario
like the one described above.

“In this article, I’ll introduce you to the essentials of
optimization: what to optimize and how to avoid the usual pitfalls.
I’ll also provide a series of tips for performance optimizing the
Java language, show you how to use a simple Java utility class to
test the results, and close with some guidelines for optimizing
your software. Throughout the article we’ll focus on the
optimization requirements of pervasive applications, or
applications designed for mobile environments. Although the coding
techniques you’ll learn are specific to the Java platform, the
basic ideas are adoptable to other environments and
technologies…”

Complete Story