@iska Literally why? Even if you implemented the decoder in Bash it would still be the storage that ends up as the bottleneck unless you're rich and buying enterprise SSDs for mass storage (ridiculous).

A few of Common Lisp implementations are essentially interpreted, too.

Python is notable in this case because it's "common-enough it's basically litter lying discarded on the ground".

Pure CL implementations of common compressed archive formats actually seem to be lagging behind.