> they have to jump through numerous hoops In clisp and sbcl (I do not have a lot of experience with other implementations), the "make this an executable binar

> they have to jump through numerous hoops In clisp and sbcl (I do not have a lot of experience with other implementations), the "make this an executable binary" command is a one-liner, so the hoops are at least comparable to other languages. It occurs to me that every language that has a binary deploy has extra hoops, depending upon what you want. For example, you have to make sure that you use the right flags on gcc to debug your code with debugging symbols (not the default) or use "tail call optimization". No, actually it is worse: serious C projects have large, ugly Makefiles with optimization parameters, dependent library libs specified, dependent library include paths, etc etc. It is so ugly that several systems have been written for the singular purpose of creating a Makefile just so that your little Gtk App can compile. And C is a language people consider to be a real language that compiles stuff. :) The hoops are not limited to languages with a REPL.