If you've ever written cross-platform code, especially between little and big endian machines, or even worse, different 64-bit implementations, then you know th

If you've ever written cross-platform code, especially between little and big endian machines, or even worse, different 64-bit implementations, then you know that compilers can't even come close to solving everything for you. Cross platform code needs lots of thought and hard work. THAT is why VM languages are nice. As for JITs, yes, they're getting much faster and much better at recognizing code to optimize. Then again, so are static compilers. But both of these technologies are slowly merging together. JITs are getting ahead of time compilation, and static compilers are getting profile directed compilations. You just have to ask yourself, is a 40% boost in performance worth hours, possibly weeks, of rewriting code for a different platform?