I've recently started implementing a VM for Scheme [1] and was already envisioning to maybe add Clojure at some point. I'm writing it in plain C, since I don't

I've recently started implementing a VM for Scheme [1] and was already envisioning to maybe add Clojure at some point. I'm writing it in plain C, since I don't see much reason to use C++ for the VM itself, and I like the simplicity and transparency of C. Also, I'm hoping to prove security at some point and C may make that easier (support from tooling like proof assistants). I don't think C++ would help enough to avoid security pitfalls by itself, unless one accepts the result to be very slow. But the VM does compile as C++, and complex data structures like HAMT may really better be written in C++, so I don't think I mind that. I think the approach to take for all speed-sensitive objects would be for them to be integrated directly with the GC (allocated from the GC heap, and traced via an object specific method). Let me know if you'd like to discuss this more. [1] https://github.com/pflanze/lilyvm https://github.com/pflanze/lilyvm