> JIT warmup is real. The first call to any method pays the compilation cost. In a database engine, the first transaction after startup shouldn’t be 100x slower than the steady state.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it what aot was supposed to solve?
In the section “Hardware-accelerated WAL checksums” he explains how the JIT compiles away the hardware support stuff depending on the exact capabilities of the system its on. With AOT you don’t get this - it’s way more coarse like x64 vs ARM
AOT is a little fussy in real-world usage particularly for things like reflection. You can probably force it to work but it may make your code much uglier.
Span<T> is more important for performance TBH JIT warmup isn't a huge issue for a long-running process
Flip side is that if you use more source generation, it may end up making the code more terse/"prettier" where it matters and avoid the reflection hit.
AI agents seem fairly good at generating source generators so there doesn't seem to be a reason to not use them.
Only a subset of reflection is actually AoT safe, and you can run into issues like "the method you wanted to call wasn't statically referenced anywhere, so there is no compiled implementation of it".
That's due to trimming which can be also be enabled for self-contained builds that use JIT compilation. Trimming is mandatory for AOT though. But you can use annotations to prevent trimming of specific thing.
AOT doesn't support generating new executable code at runtime (Reflection.Emit), like you can do in JIT mode.
Eh, I don't see that as a huge deal because the first thing the DB has to do is warm up the disk cache, at least for the indexes. Of course the first call is slow.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if American companies started using it if the French get it right. The instability of the current administration is one thing, but Microsoft disregard for its user deserves an appropriate response that will actually hit them where they care.
I would love to self-host France's "La Suite" to keep myself out of Google and MS... but for many companies, it will not matter how much you tell them there are options that are both cheaper and better. They will believe that paying someone tons of money is better because others cannot afford it. That inherently makes it superior... for some reason... you see?
> I wouldn't be surprised if American companies started using it if the French get it right
As a French citizen who own a business [1] that is in direct competition with this incentive from my very own government, I'm happy to disclose more than 50% of my customer base is already in America and France represent about 1%.
> Mocking the former is now culturally acceptable on HN, the latter not so much.
I have the opposite impression. In the past, I'd very often react "WTF who'd ever want to use it?" in my mind, whereas the comments were very kind and supportive.
Now, whenever someone submits their AI slop, they mostly hear some comments about this. The very fact that this whole thread is about bashing Simon speaks for itself. The HN community is split between those aggressively promoting it, those hating it, and the rest of us using it in one way or another, not yet sure about full-scale consequences for the future, and quite frankly powerless about it.
> I always read on how much power AI can bring to common people, and it it always without any evidence whatsoever.
Not really "much power" but more like a viable alternative: in a world where everybody needs LLMs to do their white-collar work, you can't force me to use your paid LLM subscription as my local-running model is close enough.
While I agree, nuclear weapons have their own drawbacks and unless you invest in the full triad, just having siloes may even make you more of a victim (that's their main function anyway).
What they can and have started to do is to make deals with partners like Ukraine to diversify their defense systems so they are independent from the USA.
As Iran has shown, you don't need nukes, just a means of cutting off, or at least severely restricting, the flow of oil. All Saudi needs to do is let the US and/or the world know that if they do/don't do X the taps turn off, as Iran has shown. That's a more powerful weapon than having a few sanctions-triggering bombs.
Imagine you elect the president because he promises he will finish wars instead of starting them. And after it's elected, he's doing exactly the opposite. Philosophical question: ws he elected 'duly'?
What did you choose instead?
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