Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > It's very easy to see the code of 'car' in Emacs.  All you need is run
   > GDB:
   >
   >   $ gdb ./emacs
   >   ...
   >   (gdb) disassemble /m Fcar

   So, while I can do this mechanically, it will not understand it.
   Not to the level to draw conclusions about what is different in Elisp
   compared to CL.

The issue is not Emacs Lisp vs. Common Lisp.  What you mean is what
the difference is between SBCL and GNU Emacs.'

The question can be rephrased as what is the difference between GNU
Emacs and GCC?  Why is GCC so much faster?  And if you phrase it like
that you will see that it really doesn't make much sense anymore,
since you are comparing different things.

Emacs could implement optimizaations that GCC does for C, or ADA
.. but it breaks down very quickly.