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The ultimate judges of whether your application performs
well are the application’s users. Developers can measure application
performance in terms of how much time certain operations take to
run, or how many instances of objects are created. However, those
metrics aren’t important to end users. Sometimes users measure performance
by different criteria. For example, does the application operate
quickly and smoothly, and respond quickly to input? Does it have
a negative affect on the performance of the system? Ask yourself
the following questions, which are tests of perceived performance:
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Are animations smooth or choppy?
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Does video content look smooth or choppy?
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Do audio clips play continuously, or do they pause and resume?
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Does the window flicker or turn blank during long operations?
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When you type, does the text input keep up or lag behind?
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If you click, does something happen immediately, or is there
a delay?
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Does the CPU fan get louder when the application runs?
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On a laptop computer or mobile device, does the battery deplete
quickly while running the application?
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Do other applications respond poorly when the application
is running?
The distinction between perceived performance and actual performance
is important. The way to achieve the best perceived performance
isn’t always the same as the way to get the absolute fastest performance.
Make sure that your application never executes so much code that
the runtime isn’t able to frequently update the screen and gather
user input. In some cases, achieving this balance involves dividing
up a program task into parts so that, between parts, the runtime
updates the screen. (See
Rendering performance
for specific guidance.)
The tips and techniques described here target improvements in
both actual code execution performance and in how users perceive
performance.
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