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My favorite reference on code tuning is Writing Efficient Programs (Bentley, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982). The book is out of print but worth reading if you can find it. It's an expert treatment of code tuning, broadly considered. Bentley describes techniques that trade time for space and space for time. He provides several examples of redesigning data types to reduce both space and time. His approach is a little more anecdotal than the one taken here, and his anecdotes are interesting. He takes a few routines through several optimization steps so that you can see the effects of first, second, and third attempts on a single problem. Bentley strolls through the primary contents of the book in 135 pages. The book has an unusually high signal-to-noise ratio— it's one of the rare gems that every practicing programmer should own.

Appendix 4 of Bentley's Programming Pearls, 2d ed. (Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000) contains a summary of the code-tuning rules from his earlier book.

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You can also find a full array of technology-specific optimization books. Several are listed below, and the Web link to the left contains an up-to-date list.

Booth, Rick. Inner Loops: A Sourcebook for Fast 32-bit Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

Gerber, Richard. Software Optimization Cookbook: High-Performance Recipes for the Intel Architecture. Intel Press, 2002.

Hasan, Jeffrey and Kenneth Tu. Performance Tuning and Optimizing ASP.NET Applications. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2003.

Killelea, Patrick. Web Performance Tuning, 2d ed. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, 2002.

Larman, Craig and Rhett Guthrie. Java 2 Performance and Idiom Guide. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Shirazi, Jack. Java Performance Tuning. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, 2000.

Wilson, Steve and Jeff Kesselman. Java Platform Performance: Strategies and Tactics. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000.