To summarize, as memory goes too low, garbage collection could kick in, but it in turn needs memory to maintain a traversal stack … Quite a catch-22.

This final part of the series will step outside the domain of standard C and investigate a pattern for event-driven applications. The REACTOR pattern decouples different responsibilities and allows applications to demultiplex and dispatch events from potentially many clients.

This part of the series will highlight another principle for dependency management and illustrate how both of these principles may be realized in C using the OBSERVER pattern.

This part of the series will investigate a design pattern that adds flexibility to common software entities by letting clients customize and extend them without modifying existing code.

“There is more to life than increasing its speed” - Mahatma Gandhi

We live in a fast food culture. Not only must our dinner arrive yesterday, our car should be fast, and our entertainment instant. Our code should also run like lightning. I want my result. And I want it now.

Ironically, writing fast programs takes a long time.

Optimisation is a spectre hanging over software development, as W.A. Wulf observed. “More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason – including blind stupidity”.

It’s a well-worn subject, with plenty of trite soundbites bounding around, and the same advice being served time and time again. But despite this, a lot of code is still not developed sensibly. Programmers get sidetracked by the lure of efficiency and write bad code in the name of performance.

In these articles we’ll address this. We’ll tread some familiar ground and wander well-worn paths, but look out for some new views on the way. Don’t worry – if the subject’s optimisation it shouldn’t take too long...