I have written and use my own Lisp, Emblem.   It&#x27;s syntactically similar to Common Lisp, but like Scheme is a Lisp 1.<p>Functions are incrementally compiled into byte code instructions for a virtual stack machine I designed specifically to run Lisp.   Compiled functions are added to the Lisp image, instead of being run directly in a Unix shell.   The virtual machine is written in C++.   Using the read function as the parser and Lisp-specific byte code as the target simplifies the compiler, which is only 1000 lines long.   It also reduces the size of the object code.   This does come at the expense of speed, but it&#x27;s fast enough for my requirements.