alt Hacker NewsYou are ignoring his "conceptually" bit and that is a reference to R.E.P.Loop which is what interpreters do: they read, they evaluate, they output, and loop.
You are ignoring his "conceptually" bit and that is a reference to R.E.P.Loop which is what interpreters do: they read, they evaluate, they output, and loop.
Conceptually is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, then. The evaluation step of many (I won't say most) mainstream (not academic, and not toys people create in class) lisps will do a compilation step. It is not being interpreted any more than gcc interprets your C code. Describing it as interpretation is often wrong, and leads people to the extremely common (even here on HN) mistaken belief that Lisps are strictly interpreted and never compiled.
No reason to leave a mistake (if it was one) or a confusing statement (if it was meant in your, hah, interpretation) unaddressed.