In a recent entry on differences between Haskell and Lisp, one of the Lisp community’s long-time members, Daniel Weinreb, asked about my stated aversion to JVM-based languages for everyday computing (some times referred to as “scripting”).

… The fact that you distinguish between server-side and client-side applications suggests to me that what you’re really talking about is start-up latency: you’re saying that a very small program written for the JVM nevertheless has a significant fixed overhead that causes perceived latency to the user.

… As a hypothetical question just to clarify your meaning: if there were a JVM implementation that started up instantly, so that the speed of execution of a small program would be the same as the speed of the same code appearing in the middle of a long-running server process, would that answer your objections?

…Also, what you said about the JIT, and alternative VMs, can be supplemented by mentioning all the other JVM facilities that exist, like code coverage, performance and memory analysis, and live introspection; along with the ability to pick JVMs to run on phones, or satisfy real-time computing requirements.