D vs VM-based platforms

[Sean Kelly]

Jan Claeys wrote:
> 
> And I think in the case of dynamic languages like Python, a JIT-compiler
> often can create much better code at run-time than a compiler could do
> when compiling it before run-time.

One issue with run-time optimization is its impact on performance.  A 
traditional compiler can take as long as it wants to exhaustively 
optimize an application, while a JIT-compiler may only optimize in a way 
that does not hurt application responsiveness or performance.  At SDWest 
last year, there was a presentation on C++ vs. Java performance, and one 
of the most significant factors was that most Java JIT-compilers perform 
little if any optimization, while C++ compilers optimize exhaustively. 
That said, JIT optimization is still a relatively new practice, and with 
more cores being added to computers these days it's entirely possible 
that a JIT optimizer could run on one or more background CPUs and do 
much better than today.


Sean