score:53

Accepted answer

The JVM doesn't optimize static initializers (which is what this is) to the same level that it optimizes method calls. Unfortunately, when you do a lot of work there, that hurts performance--this is a perfect example of that. This is also one reason why the old Application trait was considered problematic, and why there is in Scala 2.9 a DelayedInit trait that gets a bit of compiler help to move stuff from the initializer into a method that's called later on.

(Edit: fixed "constructor" to "initializer". Rather lengthy typo!)

score:41

Code inside a top-level object block is translated to a static initializer on the object's class. The equivalent in Java would be 

class Performance{
    static{
      //expensive calculation
    }
    public static void main(String[] args){
      //use result of expensive calculation
    }
}

The HotSpot JVM doesn't perform any optimizations on code encountered during static initializers, under the reasonable heuristic that such code will only be run once.


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