Is this plotting time normal?

General Usage
1

Been using Julia for < 1 day, so pardon any dumb questions…
I installed the Plots package (using Pkg; pkg.Add("Plots")).
(1) Then the first time I did using Plots, I saw "[ Info: Precompiling Plots [91a5bcdd-55d7-5caf-9e0b-520d859cae80]``" for about 15-20 seconds. (2) Further, when I used plot(x, y)` for the first time, it took about 4 seconds to plot and faster thereafter.

Q1: Is (2) just an effect of JIT? Also is ~4 seconds really the time it’ll take the first time or have I installed something incorrectly?
Q2: What’s the reason for (2) and is the time it took normal?
(I use Ubuntu 16.04 w/ 16GB Intel Core™ i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz × :sunglasses:

Note that the original poster on Slack cannot see your response here on Discourse. Consider transcribing the appropriate answer back to Slack, or pinging the poster here on Discourse so they can follow this thread.
(Original message :slack:) (More Info)

2

Many parts of the Plots package are precompiled the first time you enter using Plots. This work takes a handful of seconds, as you experienced. For similar reasons, when you start a Julia session and make an initial plot there is a few seconds’ delay. Subsequent plots come up quickly.

2 Likes