"performant" or "performance"?

Question

5 Tips for Performant, Thread-Safe Java From ConcurrentHashMap

Why does this article use performant instead of performance? Are they any differences between these two?

Answer 1

Yes, there is a difference between these two words. The difference is that they're essentially different parts of speech. The word performant is an adjective while the word performance is a noun. In the link above, performant is defined as working in an effective way. I hear this word a lot used in the world of programming and technology. A performant piece of code is one that works with great performance. In other words, if you want your code to be performant, you should write it in a way that makes your code run fast and efficiently.

To make a long story short, the word performant is used to describe a piece of code or a particular piece of technology as working efficiently while the word performance talks about a task or operation seen in terms of how successfully it is performed or how successfully it operates.

You could say, for example, 5 performance tips, but you wouldn't say 5 performant tips because a performance tip means a tip for how to make things work with better performance while a performant tip would mean that the tip itself works with great performance. And that, of course, makes no sense. Likewise, performant Java means a piece of Java code that works efficiently whereas performance Java would mean a piece of Java code that has something to do with performance rather than being itself performant. Does that make any sense to you? I don't think so. That phrase, for all practical purposes, is pretty much meaningless.