In Lisp it makes a difference, because source code is data (other than text) and one can also compute source code in the REPL. For example we can write a macro

In Lisp it makes a difference, because source code is data (other than text) and one can also compute source code in the REPL. For example we can write a macro in Lisp and play around with it giving it code as data and see the result as code as data. CL-USER 1 > (defmacro while (condition &body body) `(tagbody start (if (not ,condition) (go end)) ,@body (go start) end)) WHILE CL-USER 2 > (setf a 1) 1 CL-USER 3 > '(while (< a 4) (print a) (incf a)) (WHILE (< A 4) (PRINT A) (INCF A)) CL-USER 4 > (macroexpand-1 *) (TAGBODY START (IF (NOT (< A 4)) (GO END)) (PRINT A) (INCF A) (GO START) END) T CL-USER 5 > (pprint *) (TAGBODY START (IF (NOT (< A 4)) (GO END)) (PRINT A) (INCF A) (GO START) END) CL-USER 6 > (eval ***) 1 2 3 NIL