optimization tricks ?

[James Hague]

>Since most worthwhile performance increases come from algorithmic
>changes, I'd have to agree with Francesco's methodology.  Discussion
>on the list about whether to go for "beauty" first is just a minor
>problem of choosing a decent algorithm ... for some value of decent.
>:-)

You also have to realize the limits of Erlang, or at least the type of 
problem it isn't suited for.  If your problem is very state-heavy, then 
writing it in an imperative language may make sense.  Some types of 
games--what the orignal poster mentioned--tend to lean more toward the 
imperative side of things.  Might be able to get away with just using ETS 
or process tables in lieu of variables.  Be interesting to try.

One tiny code improvement that isn't used in many older examples is this:

dumb_example({X,Y}, L) -> {X+Y, {X,Y}}.

can be replaced by:

dumb_example({X,Y}=A, L) -> {X+Y, A}.

The second version avoids rebuilding the {X,Y} tuple, or so I've been 
told :)

James