The difference being that those projects required $$$$ that only big corps were willing to shell out.
Now you get free beer via GraalVM (evolution from MaximeVM efforts at Sun Labs), and OpenJ9, IBM's AOT compiler that traces back to Maestro realtime JVM for embedded development.
So complaining about $$$$ in AOT toolchains is no longer a reason.
Then we have the Android cousin that does a mix of JIT and AOT since Android 7.
Comments
Like for about 25 years now, small sample (there are others),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excelsior_JET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_for_Java
https://www.aicas.com/products-services/jamaicavm/
https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/perc
The difference being that those projects required $$$$ that only big corps were willing to shell out.
Now you get free beer via GraalVM (evolution from MaximeVM efforts at Sun Labs), and OpenJ9, IBM's AOT compiler that traces back to Maestro realtime JVM for embedded development.
So complaining about $$$$ in AOT toolchains is no longer a reason.
Then we have the Android cousin that does a mix of JIT and AOT since Android 7.