Optimizing Common Lisp

I see the following in code written by newcomers to CL frequently:

    (optimize (speed 3) (safety 0)) 

but it is a very bad habit to get used to, in general, and may create the impression that it's needed for optimized code. Instead, use this where needed:

    (optimize (speed 3) (safety 1))

which will result in roughly same performance for the vast majority of cases, but keep array bounds checks and (weaker) type checks.

For SBCL, there's also the excellent sb-simd [1] plus compiler macros and even hooking into some of the VM internals for custom code generation [2].

[1] https://www.sbcl.org/manual/#sb_002dsimd

[2] https://pvk.ca/Blog/2014/03/15/sbcl-the-ultimate-assembly-co...

Also, after profiling with sb-sprof, calling

  (disassemble '<profiled function>)

Will show the assembly augmented with the fraction of sampled hits on each individual instruction.

Thanks for writing this up! I have done some profiling in LispWorks Pro, but not SBCL. I will try it out.

Off topic: I also noticed your nice cooking page for mixing and matching herbs.