Comment by giovannibonetti

You can have great abstractions on the upper levels that lower to fast primitives. See the articles [1] Push your "ifs" up and "fors' down and [2] Vectorized interpreters for more details.

[1] https://debasishg.github.io/blog/push-ifs-up-fors-down/ [2] https://venge.net/graydon/talks/VectorizedInterpretersTalk-2...