Julia: High Performance Programming

Chapter 4. Functions and Macros – Structuring Julia Code for High Performance

In Julia, the function is the primary unit of a code structure. Idiomatic Julia code consists of many small functions that are defined with different types of arguments. In general, the overhead of a function call in Julia is very small, and, with type specialization, the compiled version of the function is very efficient. In this chapter, we will look at some of the techniques that Julia uses to make function calls very fast. We will also look at some limitations that are worth keeping in mind for the fastest code. Finally, we will look at some situations where moving code out of functions and into other structures, such as macros and staged functions, allows code to ...