🚀 go-pugleaf

re: it is most likely that things like dispatch don't happen as the only
    operation in the only inner loop that matters. More likely to affect
    performance is the design of the algorithms and the data structures.

Henry Baker has written a series of little papers, to be published 
in the upcoming issue of Lisp Pointers, in which he takes a revisionist
view of the actual code in your now-famous book.  Agreed that the 
point of the particular codes (i.e., Lisp Programs) is to serve as
as standard benchmark from some micro-areas of Lisp System performance, 
but one could view the code as expressing an algorithm for a certain 
problem.  In the latter view, Baker asks how a few clever re-coding tricks 
would have altered the end results.  Factors of 10 and more pop up.  As 
you say, "design of the algorithms . . ."

Check it out in Lisp Pointers.


-- JonL --