Java compilation [was GCs in the news]

[John Colvin via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 23 July 2014 at 08:46:32 UTC, Russel Winder via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Tue, 2014-07-22 at 10:55 +0000, Paulo Pinto via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
>> The JVM JIT was originally targeted to SELF, not Java.
>
> I think you'll find HotSpot evolved from a Smalltalk JIT 
> originally.
> Borland and Semantec had JVM JITs as well, Sun even licenced the
> Semantec one for a while.
>
> […]
>> Functional programming languages have AOT compilers and they 
>> perform quite well, almost to C level in many use case cases.
>
> True. Java/JVM/JIT also performs very well surpassing C in many 
> cases.
> Indeed C++ surpasses C in many cases as well.

I am suspicious. I understand that a situation can be contrived 
such that C will lose, but in normal, sensible code the only 
language I've ever seen reliably beat C is FORTRAN.