Modern C compilers have profile guided optimization for that. You run your code, profile it, and the optimizer uses that data in the next pass. So this is something you can get without a JIT compiler.
In my experience, PGO is something that relatively few C/C++ programmers know about or at least use... roughly the same percentage of java programmers know how JIT works. But all java programmers get to benefit from JIT.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of java bugs the hell out of me and I'm personally much more comfortable writing c++. I'm just pointing out that a code running on a virtual machine isn't some horrible back water.
