Microbenchmarks vs Macrobenchmarks (i.e. What's a Microbenchmark?)

I’ve mentioned a few times recently that something is a “microbenchmark.” What does that mean? Is it good or bad?Let’s talk about that. Along the way, we’ll talk about benchmarks that are not microbenchmarks and how to pick a scale/size for a specific benchmark.I talk about this because I write benchmarks for Ruby. But you may prefer to read it because you use benchmarks for Ruby - if you read the results or run them. Knowing what can go wrong in benchmarks is like learning to spot bad statistics: it’s not easy, but some practice and a few useful principles can help you out a lot.