[pipeline_peak]

None…..lol A common language is expected to run as fast as it can. It is usually designed by specialists knowledgeable enough to implement a byte code vm.

AST interpreters are found in, as you said, traditional Unix interpreters, undergrad projects, and toy languages. They are an outdated concept, and rightfully so because they aren’t much more easier to develop than a byte code compiler anyway.

You could think the benefit would be AST modifications at runtime like Lisp. But even then, I don’t think that’s an exclusive feature.