Not really. Integer boxing is totally orthogonal to compilation vs interpretation. Assuming we need to preserve program semantics, a naive compiler would have e

Not really. Integer boxing is totally orthogonal to compilation vs interpretation. Assuming we need to preserve program semantics, a naive compiler would have exactly the same boxing overhead. And on the other hand a smart interpreter could eliminate it. (E.g stack allocate integers by default, dynamically detect conditions that require promoting them to the heap, annotate the str builtin as escape safe.)