Startup time is definitely relevant for any kind of user-facing application. I'm sure the JIT versions are actually faster since both languages (specially Java)

Startup time is definitely relevant for any kind of user-facing application. I'm sure the JIT versions are actually faster since both languages (specially Java) have features that benefit greatly from it. But if I'm loading a constraint solver into my Python app I don't want it to drag a massive JVM around and take 3 seconds to load up. Same with an emulator, most emulators load up in milliseconds.