QuickBasic supported value types and AOT to native code, and while Visual Basic used P-Code, version 6 introduced a proper AOT native compiler.

Modula-3 was also a big influence, at least accordingly to some papers.

There was surely demand for AOT, given that most commercial JVMs had it in some form or the other since 2000.

Even Sun actually supported it in Java Embedded variant for OEMs, probably grudgingly.

Common Lisp certainly has support for value types.

As for AOT, there may not have been sufficient demand from Sun/Oracle. I only joined relatively recently, but we generally do expensive things only if we believe they have a huge benefit or in huge demand, and we believe it can be long-lasting. The assumption is that any new feature will require maintenance for 20 years, taking away resources from other things. So if something is expensive, even if it's cool or some people could find it very useful -- we don't do it. The assumption is that the ecosystem is large enough that others can, and will.

I can check the respective manuals if you wish.

Yep, I did VB programming for a short while.

And please note that even though my focus is now elsewhere, Java is one of my favourite eco-systems.

As a peasant I just wished that Java 1.0 was more like Go, given the existing alternatives back then.

So it kind of stayed as a pet peeve of mine.

Same applies to .NET, just in a different way.

However due to the hardware architecture changes and new kids on the block, it is starting to be an issue.

I keep wishing to see them arrive, have watched all the JVM Language Summit, Devoxx and JavaONE talks about them.

Meanwhile I can already enjoy them elsewhere. :(

That's perfectly fine. We think that our priorities are right for the workloads Java is used for (e.g. people care more about a low-latency GC like ZGC, and deep low-overhead in-production profiling, like JFR, than about AOT).