alt Hacker NewsConceptually 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.
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Disagree. Concepually is lifting according to its weight class here. It is entirely irrelevant whether all or most implementations compile. The germinal fact is that a "naive" interpreter implementation of LISP does not in anyway alter the semantics of the language or the code being executed.
> No reason to leave a mistake (if it was one) or a confusing statement (if it was meant in your, hah, interpretation) unaddressed.
Look buddy, I'm not here for snarking others. I am here to learn and exchange ideas.
> 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.
Well, I literally said in my post that basically all Lisp was compiled. And I was replying to a guy saying that I thought all lisp is compiled. So hopefully I'm not contributing to that misconception.