Required reading, "Things Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than", https://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html
And: "A Personal History of Compilation Speed, Part 2" https://prog21.dadgum.com/47.html
And: "A Personal History of Compilation Speed, Part 2" https://prog21.dadgum.com/47.html
One strange feature is that a function with a syntax error in it still compiles, but compiles as throw new Error("Syntax error: ..."); - I suppose this is necessary for an interactive compiler!