>"That said, I don't mind reinventing the wheel in new ways - every time our wheels get better and better. But perhaps they could get better faster with fewer steps backwards with a little schooling on the foundations of our field."

You may be interested in Graal/Truffle. One of the main aims is to make it a playground for experimenting with programming language design by reducing the work that goes into the underpinnings of these new languages. It's also meant to offer fairly decent performance.

https://medium.com/@octskyward/graal-truffle-134d8f28fb69#.n...

https://github.com/graalvm/truffle/blob/master/README.md