Making Is A Fast

Explore the optimization journey of Ruby's `is_a?` method in this 27-minute conference talk from RubyConf Mini 2022. Discover how this seemingly simple method can become a surprising performance bottleneck in Ruby applications. Learn about the various ways `is_a?` is used, including case statements, rescue statements, protected methods, and `Module#===`. Follow the speaker's process of identifying the bottleneck in production, implementing optimizations, and resolving bugs. Gain insights into the transformation of `is_a?` into constant-time operation and its implementation in assembly language for YJIT. Understand the performance improvements achieved in Ruby 3.2 and how these optimizations can benefit your Ruby projects.