I'm pretty sure that's exactly their point. People assume that interactive means interpreted, but that doesn't need to be the case.

Ah, my bad, I didn't caught the sarcasm in that post. Yeah, it makes sense now... ^__^;

Smalltalk is compiled to bytecode.

Smalltalk is a family of dialects and implementations. Most of them are indeed compiled to bytecode which is then executed by a JIT VM. Most of them use the "image" concept where you are always in runtime like in a classic Lisp, and yes, the VM handles shape changes etc etc. But some Smalltalks actually have other characteristics, like non JIT or even compiling via C (Smalltalk/X does that I believe).

Which were originally the CPU instructions of Dorado, given its microcoded CPU.

And gave birth to all modern JITs.