Profiling and optimizing.
I tend to optimize the algorithms... :-) For instance, one of our pages some months ago was coded to put a huge amount of data into a PHP session variable. I changed the algorithm so that it stores a list of numbers instead. Made a palpable difference.
Your comment reminds me of a dicussion on Linux Kernel some months back where ESR tried to warn Linus about the genius programmer problem. I know my colleagues and I are good programmers, so perhaps we're susceptible to that kind of problem, too.
Wade.
