Re:On the history and justification of the C programming lan...
by nickpsecurity on Thursday August 18, 2016 @08:08PM
(#12317162)
I didn't know about vacuum tubes hga brought up. However, Chez Scheme posted here a while back started on 8-bit systems. PreScheme is a C competitor that's highly efficient. PICO LISP link has one plus others in the comments. So, they can be done.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210931
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PreScheme
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2124