Is the conditional operator slow?

Question

I was looking at some code with a huge switch statement and an if-else statement on each case and instantly felt the urge to optimize. As a good developer always should do I

Answer 1

I don't quite understand why you would expect an if statement to be slower than a dictionary lookup. At the very least a hashcode needs to be calculated and then it needs to be looked up in a list. I don't see why you would assume this is faster than a cmp/jmp.

Specifically, I don't even think the method you're optimising is that great; it seems that it could be made better at the calling stage (though I can't be sure, as you haven't provided the context).