What are the disadvantages of targeting the JVM instead of x86?

Question

I'm developing a new language. My initial target was to compile to native x86 for the Windows platform, but now I am in doubt.

I've seen some new languages target the JVM (most notable Scala and Clojure). Ofcourse it's not possible to port every language easily to the JVM; to do so may lead to small changes to the language and it's design.

After posing this question, I even doubted more about this decision. I now know some "pro" JVM arguments. The original question was: is targetting the JVM a good idea, when creating a compiler for a new language?

Updated the question: What are the disadvantages of targeting the JVM instead of x86 on Windows?

Answer 1

You may want to look at targeting the LLVM instead of the JVM. The LLVM can be used to target a number of architectures, including x86.

There's more to portability than simple CPU support, but the LLVM can help a lot and still give you native code, if you like.