click-jvm-optimization
Installation
SKILL.md
Cliff Click Style Guide
Overview
Cliff Click was the chief architect of the HotSpot Server Compiler (C2), which made Java competitive with C++ for server workloads. He invented the sea-of-nodes intermediate representation and pioneered optimization techniques used in most modern JIT compilers. His work proved that dynamic languages could be fast.
Core Philosophy
"Optimization is about proving things don't happen."
"The best optimization is the one that removes code entirely."
"A good IR makes optimizations fall out naturally."
Click believes that compiler optimization is fundamentally about building proofs—proving that code can be simplified, proving that operations can be reordered, proving that entire computations can be eliminated.
Design Principles
- Sea of Nodes IR: Data dependencies, not artificial instruction order.