The big distinction to me is that there is a final executable that eventually gets created, whereas Lisp programs can continue to generate code and self-modify

The big distinction to me is that there is a final executable that eventually gets created, whereas Lisp programs can continue to generate code and self-modify at runtime. Cakelisp differs from Zig in that arbitrary code modification is supported, which is a step closer to the modifiable environment of Lisps. Very few languages besides lisp allow you to do things like "iterate over every function defined and change their bodies, and create a new function which calls them". Zig does not support that. It's extremely useful for some tasks (e.g. hot-reloading code modification, mentioned in the article) Jai isn't out yet, but I was inspired by many of the comptime ideas.