# Doing Less

same goal, fewer instructions.

## Approach

- redundant ops → compute once, not per iteration
- dead code → remove branches/calculations that never affect output
- logic simplification → flatten conditionals, reduce nesting, early returns
- combine ops → merge passes where safe
- efficient APIs → prefer built-in/library over hand-rolled
- remove indirection → inline trivial functions, eliminate unnecessary abstractions

## Principles

- every instruction → measurable purpose
- transformation that doesn't change behavior → question its necessity
- simplest correct implementation → complexity is tax on future changes

## Pitfalls

- premature simplification → don't sacrifice correctness/readability for marginal gains
- over-inlining → increases code size, hurts instruction cache
- compiler already does this → verify before duplicating effort