It is a virtual machine by the normal definition of the word, doesn't mean it can't be AOT compiled.
The part of parsing that can be skipped is a minuscule part of compilation, won't do much for performance.
I guess that the binary representation could theoretically be a bit smaller. However the current status is that compilers need to ship a fair amount runtime stuff, like an allocator and basic string handling, so the resulting binary isn't necessarily smaller than the source code of a fully featured language. That of course weighs down compilation as well.
The part of parsing that can be skipped is a minuscule part of compilation, won't do much for performance.
I guess that the binary representation could theoretically be a bit smaller. However the current status is that compilers need to ship a fair amount runtime stuff, like an allocator and basic string handling, so the resulting binary isn't necessarily smaller than the source code of a fully featured language. That of course weighs down compilation as well.