MACLISP was most definitely a compiled language, it’s just that like modern Lisps you could mix the two (compiled and interpreted code). I tried to be clear by

MACLISP was most definitely a compiled language, it’s just that like modern Lisps you could mix the two (compiled and interpreted code). I tried to be clear by using the modern terminology “generic function”. If you compile a function with those annotations you’d end up with two functions: one that could be called if you knew the types at compile time and one that did not.