> An example here is how, sure, in theory, JITs can outpace AOT compilation because they have all the information the AOT compiler has plus runtime insights. But the ability to truly do that always seems to be a decade of compiler development away, with many giving up on the idea entirely.

JIT has been used very successfully for a couple of languages, e.g. Java. But adding it requires a lot of effort. The same thing is unfortunately true for new query languages, building a new database is really expensive, this is probably the main reason that there have been no serious alternatives to SQL.