JVM Creature Comforts
summary
The JVM gains a function-pointer style instruction — invokeDynamic — the first new bytecode since 1995 and can be used to cache VAR dereferences via a switchpoint var caching pattern that matches a “direct” branch in microbenchmarks; Nashorn demonstrates optimistic typing and a try/catch method‑handle trick to recompile on type failure and reaches performance competitive with V8; the Graal/Truffle stack lets language interpreters evolve AST nodes, inline across calls (even C into Ruby) and hand optimized machine code to the VM, but costs heavy warmup, poor stack traces, no Android support and currently single‑threaded.
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