I'm a lisp advocate and I don't have any problems with this.
You developed and optimized in lisp. I assume that you did so because that was the most productive way for you to do so. Then you decided to hand-compile to C because you needed more performance.
Maybe you could have gotten acceptable performance with a high-performance lisp implementation, maybe not. Regardless, the fact that you hand-compiled to C doesn't suggest that developing in C was a mistake.
I don't see why any lisp advocate would ever object to someone saying that developing in lisp was their best option.
You developed and optimized in lisp. I assume that you did so because that was the most productive way for you to do so. Then you decided to hand-compile to C because you needed more performance.
Maybe you could have gotten acceptable performance with a high-performance lisp implementation, maybe not. Regardless, the fact that you hand-compiled to C doesn't suggest that developing in C was a mistake.
I don't see why any lisp advocate would ever object to someone saying that developing in lisp was their best option.