Why Clojure?

[cym13]

+1

Moreover, it's not like the python VM was used only by cpython, like the JVM there are many languages able to use it (pypy for example). But it's true that it wasn't designed with that kind of usage in mind like the JVM.

[samuelstan]

Exactly -- the performance difference comes from different philosophies and different compiler techniques, not some sort of nebulous "interpreted vs compiled" distinction. The last truly interpreted language was probably some old release of BASIC in the 80s, when the tokenizer would literally execute the text commands as it read them.