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superdimwit

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On 1: this small amount of overhead matters because the amount of work you do on each opcode can be tiny. The extra jump could be 20% of your runtime! On 2: yes, this helps the indirect branch target predictor. In a real program you’ll often get repeated sequences of opcodes (increment, then compare) that can be predicted. These branch predictors can be pattern based.

I am hopeful that Julia should be able to get this cross-session caching of compiled code. Would make restarting the REPL (to e.g. add a field to a struct) much less frustrating.

A low-latency GC would also be great. But again, the JVM only has that due to many millions of dollars spent over decades.