How do I make it better?

[Bob Shaw]

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***


I'm trying to find out about tools and techniques people use
to "improve" their code.  By "improve" I don't mean debug,
but rather make functioning code reduce its execution time, size 
and utilization of other resources.  

Everyone seems to know about (the UNIX tools) prof, gprof, 
vmstat and iostat.  I was brought up on the "put it in a loop and
use a stopwatch" technique.  Are these really all that is necessary?
What I'm looking for are other tools (commercial or research) 
and techniques that are effective in giving useful feedback about 
how well a user's program is performing.  Can anyone help?  What kind 
of feedback do YOU need to tune your code to a machine?

If you don't want to clog up the net, please feel free to
respond directly.  I'll summarize if there's sufficient interest.

                                 Thanks,
                                 Bob Shaw, HP Labs

                                 CSNET: ...!ucbvax!hplabs!shaw
                                 ARPA:  shaw at hplabs.ARPA