Hacker News Reader

Anyone who is involved in any sort of performance critical work looks at compiler output on a regular, if not daily basis.

View on HN

Sure but you only look at it when optimizing some performance critical code, usually the hot path. That is usually a tiny fraction of the codebase. I also use AI to generate large amounts of code but I only inspect the actual code when critical, delicate or architecturally important stuff is involved.

Yes, but even HFT traders use Java and don't look at the compiler output.

Looking at the compiler output is a totally valid concept, but it's definitely a niche case.

If you're doing high performance Java you're definitely looking at the compiler output. At least you should be.

It's arguably more important with Java than with the compiler output for something like C++, as C2 is much more unpredictable and dependent on runtime circumstances. You also want to be real certain that bounds and null checks are omitted as those come at a pretty big performance premium.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com