Profiling
Profiling is a software development technique used to analyze the performance of a program by measuring its resource usage, such as execution time, memory consumption, and CPU cycles. It involves collecting data about a program's behavior during runtime to identify performance bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or areas for optimization. This process helps developers understand how their code performs under various conditions and workloads.
Developers should learn and use profiling when optimizing applications for speed, memory efficiency, or scalability, particularly in performance-critical systems like web servers, games, or data processing pipelines. It is essential for debugging slow code, reducing latency in user-facing applications, and ensuring resource efficiency in cloud or embedded environments. Profiling is also valuable during code reviews or refactoring to validate performance improvements.