fwiw, Racket is byte-compiled and run on a VM with a JIT compiler for optimization. Depending on the implementation, you can get machine-code from Lisp by way

fwiw, Racket is byte-compiled and run on a VM with a JIT compiler for optimization. Depending on the implementation, you can get machine-code from Lisp by way of an optimizing compiler or you can get just the interpreter. There is a lot that Common Lisp has that is heads above Python in terms of features (CLOS, numerics, streams, macros). The implementations can offer even more (threading, optimized machine code, GUIs, etc). Racket offers its own features and benefits. It has a great built in library, you can package languages as libraries, it has a great module system and public repository... Python, Lisp, Ruby... they all have their features and trade offs. Maybe you can do the same thing in Python with the correct setup. You can with Emacs, pdb, iPython, virtualenvwrapper, and a few emacs-lisp scripts. It's nothing compared to CL+Slime, but it's pretty good. I use it in my day to day work.