Awesome Reviewers

Only execute expensive operations when they are actually necessary. Avoid paying performance costs for functionality that may not be used or when conditions don’t require the expensive computation.

Key strategies:

• Conditional execution: Wrap expensive calls in conditions that check if the operation is needed
• Lazy loading: Defer expensive initialization until actually required
• Demand-based setup: Only set up costly event handlers or processing when the feature is actively used

Examples:

-- Bad: Always pay the fs_stat cost
local stat = vim.uv.fs_stat(f)

-- Good: Only pay the cost when needed
if follow_param then
  local stat = vim.uv.fs_stat(f)
end

-- Bad: Eager loading causes performance hit
complete = vim.treesitter.language._complete,

-- Good: Lazy loading avoids eager initialization
complete = function(...) return vim.treesitter.language._complete(...) end,

-- Bad: Everyone pays the cost regardless of usage
vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd('DiagnosticChanged', {
  callback = function() -- expensive string formatting end
})

-- Good: Only setup when default statusline is used
if using_default_statusline then
  vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd('DiagnosticChanged', {
    callback = function() -- expensive string formatting end
  })
end

This approach prevents unnecessary performance overhead by ensuring expensive operations are only executed when their results will actually be used or when the conditions genuinely require them.

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