Sunday, September 20, 2009

Optimization

During coding, what we need to keep in our minds is optimize the code. The direct code which hits our brain at the first instance is generally not that optimized. If given a large test case to examine the code, it fails to complete the execution in time. I came to know about this while playing online a coding event in which besides code to be right one's code should run in an asked period of time. For this we need to optimize our code a great extent.
I was asked to print all the prime numbers between given two numbers. The first code that comes to our mind is to run a loop and find all the prime numbers by dividing each number with every other number. Mind you, this takes a hell lot of time. One can optimize the code easily by discluding the numbers that get divided by 2,3,5. This takes away numbers out from the loop that prevent us from checking them. The time limit set hence becomes a little reachable.
The second thing is logic. One can even look at the problem at different angle. You can yourself Google and find that there are many other good methods of finding a prime number. One method needs the loop to run only for (n)^(1/2) times. This also reduces the time a great deal.

CODE IT.. OPTIMIZE IT!!

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