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Re:CL21: An experimental project redesigning Common Lisp by agentultra on Friday February 20, 2015 @09:13AM (#9080449)
Some Common Lisp implementations do compile down to machine code. An example of one I'm told is quite good is SBCL:

  * (disassemble #'(lambda () (loop for i from 1 upto 10 summing i)))
  
  ; disassembly for (LAMBDA ())
  ; Size: 62 bytes. Origin: #x100306FE84
  ; 84:       BB02000000       MOV EBX, 2                       ; no-arg-parsing entry point
  ; 89:       31C9             XOR ECX, ECX
  ; 8B:       EB21             JMP L1
  ; 8D:       0F1F00           NOP
  ; 90: L0:   48895DF8         MOV [RBP-8], RBX
  ; 94:       488BD1           MOV RDX, RCX
  ; 97:       488BFB           MOV RDI, RBX
  ; 9A:       41BBA0010020     MOV R11D, 536871328              ; GENERIC-+
  ; A0:       41FFD3           CALL R11
  ; A3:       488BCA           MOV RCX, RDX
  ; A6:       488B5DF8         MOV RBX, [RBP-8]
  ; AA:       4883C302         ADD RBX, 2
  ; AE: L1:   4883FB14         CMP RBX, 20
  ; B2:       7EDC             JLE L0
  ; B4:       488BD1           MOV RDX, RCX
  ; B7:       488BE5           MOV RSP, RBP
  ; BA:       F8               CLC
  ; BB:       5D               POP RBP
  ; BC:       C3               RET
  ; BD:       CC0A             BREAK 10                         ; error trap
  ; BF:       02               BYTE #X02
  ; C0:       19               BYTE #X19                        ; INVALID-ARG-COUNT-ERROR
  ; C1:       9A               BYTE #X9A                        ; RCX
Keep in mind that's with full run-time type checking and other nice debugging features. You can hint the compiler to turn these things off in your hardened code sections for even smaller, tighter code.
Re:CL21: An experimental project redesigning Common Lisp by Moyamo on Friday February 20, 2015 @09:30AM (#9080527)
I think the parent comment about VMs was aimed at clojure.