How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%

This is why I come to HN, I was going to skip this because I thought it was about video games, but really glad to have read it, and loved every line of the article.

So much to get from this.

Even if you don't have the source, you can make a change if you are annoyed enough.

If you don't like something, and the source code is out there, really go contribute.

Performance matters, know how to profile and if using an external dependency, then figure out their implementation details.

Algorithms & Data structures matter, often I see devs talking about how it doesn't matter much but the difference between using a hashmap vs array is evident.

Attentive code reviews matter, chances are they gave this to a junior dev/intern, and it worked with a small dataset and no one noticed.

I think this is a perfect example of “algorithms and data structures emphasis is overblown.” Real world performance problems don’t look like LeetCode Hard, they look like doing obviously stupid, wasteful work in tight loops.