Wilco (Wilco.Dijkstra.delete@this.ntlworld.com) on November 21, 2012 7:04 pm wrote:
> If the language used supports it, you could specialize each function to a particular instance
> of the logging object. You track every write to the logging object and a JIT would flush its
> cache on a write. A static compiler would jump to the alternative set of functions. This has
> high overheads, causing huge code bloat and (for a JIT) repeated unnecessary retranslations,
> so except for special cases (eg. path specialization for GC) this approach isn't popular.

Actually this is extremely popular, many managed programs running on server-side environments are never stopped as they can be dynamically inspected, debugged and even patched if necessary without disrupting them. VM vendors started offering these features some years back and nowadays they're common and quite welcome.