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mattclarkdotnet | on: Python 3.15's JIT is now back on track
To clarify, it is nuts that in an object method, there is a performance enhancement through caching a member value.

  class SomeClass
    def init(self)
      self.x = 0
    def SomeMethod(self)
      q = self.x
      ## do stuff with q, because otherwise you're dereferencing self.x all the damn time
1718627440 | parent | next
This is not just a performance concern, this describes completely different behaviour. You forgot that self.x is just Class.__getattr__(self, 'x') and that you can implement __getattr__ how you like. There is no object identity across the values returned by __getattr__.
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dekelpilli | parent | next
Java also has a performance cost to accessing class fields, as exampled by this (now-replaced) code in the JDK itself - https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/jdk8-b120/jdk/src/share/...
anematode | root | parent | next
Any decent JIT compiler (and HotSpot's is world class) will optimize this out. Likely this was done very early on in development, or was just to reduce bytecode size to promote inlining heuristics that use it
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LtWorf | root | parent
But what if whatever you call is also accessing and changing the attribute?
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Kamii0909 | root | parent
That was a niche optimization primarily targeting code at intepretor. Even the most basic optimizing compiler in HotSpot tiered compilation chain at that time (the client compiler or C1) would be able to optimize that into the register. Since String is such an important class, even small stuffs like this is done.
mathisfun123 | parent | next
> it is nuts that in an object method, there is a performance enhancement through caching a member value

i don't understand what you think is nuts about this. it's an interpreted language and the word `self` is not special in any way (it's just convention - you can call the first param to a method anything you want). so there's no way for the interpreter/compiler/runtime to know you're accessing a field of the class itself (let alone that that field isn't a computed property or something like that).

lots of hottakes that people have (like this one) are rooted in just a fundamental misunderstanding of the language and programming languages in general <shrugs>.

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duskdozer | parent
You mean even if x is not a property?