Game Development Patterns and Best Practices

Just in time compilation

There is yet another way to run code, using what's called a just in time compiler, or JIT for short. A JIT caches the instructions, that have been previously interpreted to machine code, and reuses those native machine code instructions thus saving time and resources by not having to re-interpret statements that have already been interpreted.

Visually, it looks similar to this:

Now, Unity uses a JIT and AOT compiler to convert code into machine code, which can then be read by the machine. The first time that a function is called, the game will convert that code into machine language and then the next time it is called, ...