I am not a Lisp developer by trade, but I accidentally made an interpreted Lisp as a habitat for LLMs. My research has mirrored exactly what you are saying.

I think conceptually, Lisp was an interpreted runtime. However, the combination of chasing efficiency with compilation and perhaps "everything is a file" consuming mindshare, interpreted Lisp seems a largely academic pursuit.

It's really great for running agents, though.

> I think conceptually, Lisp was an interpreted runtime.

This is a strange statement. The manual for Lisp 1.5 describes a compiled language. Lisps have been compiled for over 64 years now using just that version as a baseline. Why do you think Lisp was meant to be interpreted instead?