alt Hacker NewsJava startup time shouldn't really be an issue with a terminal program. I have written some pretty complex Java and Rust and C++ terminal programs, they are basically indistinguishable on run time. The reason Java starts up slow for most people is that they are running webapps with Spring and 50 dependencies and loading Tomcat, not because they are just booting a JVM and running through some functions.
Getting AoT compiled Java programs has been a life saver. Running java -jar main.java -foo -bar is very annoying and not friendly. It needs to be packaged so you can just run tool -foo -bar
+1 on the AOT compilation. I was surprised there is still a noticeable difference between Graal and a "standard" JVM even if you have eliminated all the other cruft. Both are practically usable, no question, but the latter really felt "instant".
I was amazed when I tried Graal the first time, but also had to think that this is probably what C/C++ or Rust devs just see as "normal".