Sunday, October 30, 2011

Old performance addage... Polling is bad

Its long been known that polling is bad.  It uses a ton of resources.  The challenge is it trips up even great developers.  Check out... http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/29/iphone-4s-battery-location-services-bug?cat=technology&type=article

One way to catch this is to have a good set if resource monitoring tests.  Its very likely Apple had these however its hard to catch with so many ways to configure software.  This is where collecting these same resources from released devices can help (crowd sourcing test).  Check out for example Microsofts SQM (aka Customer Improvement Program) data.

Should you decide to collect telemetry just remember the second addage... Bad collection is like polling.

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