Home Pico Lisp: A Case for Minimalist Interpreters? Pico Lisp: A Radical Approach to Application Development describes a minimalist Lisp interpreter which has been used to build real applications for ~20 years. If you ignore the tendency toward self-aggrandizing, there's some food for thought here. Pico Lisp only has native support for symbols, integers, and lists (no arrays, no structures), and is implemented as a straightfoward interpreter. Yet in the benchmarks (usual disclaimers here), Pico Lisp fares well against a compiled Lisp. Is there a case to be made for ultra lean and mean interpreters as a viable alternative to compilers? Comment viewing options Flat list - collapsed Flat list - expanded Threaded list - collapsed Threaded list - expanded Date - newest first Date - oldest first Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.