I am amazed that people say Lisp is about macros. I think it's about being homoiconic. You can make some ugly form of macros in ANY language. Homoiconic-ness is

I am amazed that people say Lisp is about macros. I think it's about being homoiconic. You can make some ugly form of macros in ANY language. Homoiconic-ness is what makes you want to make macros with Lisp. But it is much more than just about macros. Language REBOL is for example fully homoiconic. >> a: [ 300 3 ] >> insert a 'add >> probe a [ add 1 2 ] >> print first a add >> do first a 100 1 == 101 >> do a == 303 >> f: func [] a >> f == 3 >> change second :f 'subtract >> f == 297 all code is data (blocks of words and values). From * Io * example below I would say it's a little different. It's more like it has a runtime api to change/generate it's runtime. I think SmallTalk has something similar to this. * Factor * has compile time macros. At runtime it has quotations, which are blocks of code (separate from it's other data strucures I think, but don't shoot me if I'm wrong) that can be modified and executed by your code with few specific words like curry and compose. This means you have a little less freedom than in rebol where block of code is in no way different than a block of data. What is awesome about factor is that it also compiles quotations at runtime. Otherwise Factor is very very cool, and I envy some runtime features of Io a lot. And Python has as little to do with lisp as Visual Basic. Python is the world's best dynamic Imperative lang IMHO :)