You may know that compressing data helps your app run faster. You probably also know to add compression support when using Restful APIs. But how many of you know that you can also improve the performance of your code by compressing it? That’s right, compressing your code improves not just its performance but also its correctness and maintainability. In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of compressing your code, the most effective ways to do so and some best practices in doing so.
You may wonder why you would want to compress your code. After all, we are dealing with bytes. The short answer is that when you compress your code, you save disk space by reducing the file size of your app and you reduce network bandwidth consumption by reducing the size of your app’s bytecode. While these benefits are certainly important, the real reason why you want to compress your code is simply that it is faster.
– You reduce the size of your files – This is the most straightforward reason to compress your code. By reducing the size of your files, you can reduce the amount of disk space they take up and save money on storage costs. – You reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred – This is also straightforward. By compressing your code, you are reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the device’s processor and the disk. This is especially important in cases such as wireless data where the amount of data that needs to be sent is limited by the wireless network. – You reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed by the CPU – Much like the last point, you can also reduce the amount of work your CPU needs to do by compressing your code. – You reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred by TCP – The TCP protocol was designed to work with packets of a certain size. If a TCP connection is opened with a compressed app, TCP will automatically start adjusting its window such that the amount of data in each packet is just below the packet size. This ensures that the data is still received correctly. – You reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed by the network – Just like the CPU and network, TCP was also designed with a certain amount of data in mind. If your app is compressed, TCP can start and stop sending data based on the amount of data that is needed. – Your code is more readable – Compressing your code can be done in many different ways. When you compress it with a tool such as LZF or bzip2, you lose some of the readability of your code. That being said though, a lot of people don’t mind this because they are more interested in performance than readability. – You can run your compressed code on any device – Not all compression algorithms are created equal and not all devices can decode them. Additionally, not all apps can run on devices that don’t support the compression algorithm you choose to use.
There are certain best practices you should follow while compressing your code. The first is to only compress your code when it can be done efficiently. This means that you should only try to compress your code when it is not currently being compressed. This is because if it is being compressed, then the data is already compressed and hence there is no need to compress it further. The second best practice is to only compress your code when it has a high enough volume to warrant the effort of doing so. This means that you should only compress your code when it is going to be used by a lot of people. This is because the effort required to compress code is greater when the data is more frequently accessed.
The best way to improve the performance of your app is to analyze the code in your app and identify the areas that can be improved. After identifying these areas, you can use a code analysis tool to profile your code and see where it can be improved. The most effective way to do this is to start by removing code that is not being used by your users. Once you have removed all the code that is not being used, then you can start profiling your code again and look for areas that can be improved. Once identified, you can start implementing changes to improve your code’s performance.