It's instructive to read the Guy Steele papers from 48ish years ago like "Lambda: The Ultimate Goto" ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lambda:_The_Ultimate_GOT

It's instructive to read the Guy Steele papers from 48ish years ago like "Lambda: The Ultimate Goto" ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lambda:_The_Ultimate_GOTO https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lambda:_The_Ultimate_GOTO ) as they go into how the Lisp-y abstractions can correspond to machine code (as in interpreters and compilers).