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Precompilation: by compiling ahead of time a small subset of Java's core library, the startup performance have been highly optimized to the point that running a 'Hello World' program takes less than 30 milliseconds.

Sounds faster than the Java I know.

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... on startup. That doesn't mean it outcompetes Hotspot over the lifetime of the application.

That startup time is probably the biggest turnoff for people seeking to write lightweight scripts in JVM languages. If your script's runtime is 100ms after a 5 second startup, it doesn't particularly matter if the machine code version runs at half speed.

Of course, precompilation is usually a big turnoff for those same people.

but it is precompilation of the core library, not the whole app, so presumably it could be done only once for the system and cached somewhere. (maybe like .Nets global assembly cache, which caches jitted dlls)

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