5.2 Branches

People sometimes take a week to make a decision, so we can’t fault a computer if it takes a few tens of nanoseconds. However, if an if-statement appears in some heavily traveled section of the code, you might get tired of the delay. There are two basic approaches to reducing the impact of branches:

• Streamline them.
• Move them out to the computational suburbs. Particularly, get them out of loops.

In [link] we show you some easy ways to reorganize conditionals so they execute more quickly.