You may be familiar with "volatile" variables...

If not--and your project works, reliably-enough--then ignore this, because you've got 1kB to fit your code within in a short period of time, and you're not worried about your project threatening lives...

(If those "if"s and "because"s aren't true, then be sure to check out an explanation of volatile here: https://hackaday.io/project/5624/log/49037-interrupts-volatiles-and-atomics-and-maybe-threads )

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The thing with volatile is that it's absolutely essential to understand how/when to use it, if you're doing *anything* where a person could be hurt.

The thing with fitting your code in 1kB to blink some LEDs or load an LCD-display is that you probably don't care, as long as it works most of the time.

I'm *in no way* suggesting you ignore this stuff habitually. You *definitely* need to be aware of it if you're ever going to do anything where others' safety is concerned, and, realistically, probably need to be aware of it even where *functionality* is concerned.

But, that-said... It's easy to get into the "habit" of believing that "volatile" is a safe-ish way to make sure you won't run into trouble... And that's not exactly the case.

AND, that-said... If you just use volatile, and the other techniques explained at that link, willy-nilly, then you might run into *excessive code-usage*.

So, all's I'mma say, here, is... if you're using them willy-nilly, and if you're in a tremendous space-crunch like this contest, consider those cases carefully... You might save yourself a few (numerous/countless) bytes if you *don't* use them where you *know* you don't *need* them.