To grasp the interpreter speed you need to remember how memory was even more of a constraint than CPU. BASIC had to hold your code in RAM in way that's source-e

To grasp the interpreter speed you need to remember how memory was even more of a constraint than CPU. BASIC had to hold your code in RAM in way that's source-editable and runnable and compact, and process it using interpreter code that's also squeezed for its space. Any obvious optimization you just assume for a speed demon like Python nowadays, you might be surprised about when it comes to those 8-bit Basics.