"Not really, if you can dynamically load libraries at runtime, then you can separate the platform-dependent code from the main codebase, making it possible to t

"Not really, if you can dynamically load libraries at runtime, then you can separate the platform-dependent code from the main codebase, making it possible to target multiple targets without recompilation." It's not just libraries. It also stuff like the size of pointers and integers and the way that structs are aligned and packed. "I don't know much about the JVM internals, but isn't JIT'ing a more expensive process (as in CPU + memory) for the JVM? If you keep the CPU load maximized for both, won't more of those resources be used by the JVM's JIT'ing and GC'ing?" It doesn't matter how the JIT works, if you just measure performance. The JIT is just an internal thing, which you don't have to care about if you do the right benchmarks. The only thing you're interested in is is stuff like requests/second, and you shouldn't care how that is handled (through a JIT, interpreter, or native code).