Swap a Rust enum for a packed 64-bit word, and your interpreter runs 17% faster
A 16-byte Rust tagged enum was bloating every Value in the Plush interpreter, wasting half of each array slot on alignment padding. Packing the tag and payload into a single 64-bit word cut that overhead and sped up the interpreter by 17%, no algorithm changes needed. The post walks through NaN-boxing-style tricks and the cache-friendly wins. A good reminder that representation is a whole optimization lever before you touch bytecode.