Profiling Before You Optimize

00:00 So you’re thinking about optimizing your Python code, maybe to make it run faster or use less memory, but before you do anything, ask yourself this. Is it even worth optimizing?

00:11 This is where software profiling comes in. It helps you figure out whether you need to optimize at all and if yes, where to actually focus your energy. Because honestly, sometimes it’s just not worth it.

00:22 If the code runs once or twice or takes less time to run than it would to rewrite, then why bother? Most of the time you’ll only worry about performance after everything else works well.

00:34 Now, how can you actually check if everything else is working?

00:38 You can go through this checklist to make sure everything is working. Testing. Have you tested your code to prove that it actually works as expected and without errors according to your business requirements?

00:51 Refactoring. Does your code need some cleanup to become more maintainable and Pythonic?

00:57 And finally, profiling, have you identified the most inefficient parts of your code? Because just like most things in life, the Pareto Principle makes sense when it comes to making your code run faster.

01:09 Often 80% of the slowdown comes from 20% of the code. Profiling helps you find that 20%.

01:17 Okay, so what is profiling and how can you actually do it in Python? Keep watching.