Thanks for the answer and the link. I think my confusion is/was that an "if" statement in the interpreted language might even be implemented as a conditional m

Thanks for the answer and the link. I think my confusion is/was that an "if" statement in the interpreted language might even be implemented as a conditional move in assembly. Thus it seems like it would be useful to distinguish "if (condition) a = a + 1" from "if (condition) frobnicate(a)" when defining a trace, even if both are written with an "if" in the interpreted language.