Minimize performance overhead by avoiding unnecessary memory allocations, expensive data structures, and redundant object creation. Choose appropriate data types and parameter passing methods based on actual requirements rather than convenience.

Key practices:

Example of inefficient vs efficient approaches:

// Inefficient: Creates many temporary strings and copies
std::string result = "{ ";
for (size_t i = 0; i < items.size(); ++i) {
  result += "\"" + items[i].first + "\", " + items[i].second;
  if (i < items.size() - 1) result += ", ";
}

// Efficient: Uses stringstream to avoid copies
std::stringstream ss;
ss << "{ ";
for (size_t i = 0; i < items.size(); ++i) {
  ss << "\"" << items[i].first << "\", " << items[i].second;
  if (i < items.size() - 1) ss << ", ";
}
std::string result = ss.str();

Profile performance-critical code paths to identify where expensive operations like TrackingVH creation or unnecessary allocations are causing bottlenecks, then replace them with more efficient alternatives.