It's totally different. The R in REPL retains its original reference to the Lisp READer which is special when your code is structured as an AST as in all Lisps.

It's totally different. The R in REPL retains its original reference to the Lisp READer which is special when your code is structured as an AST as in all Lisps. Only in Lisps can you select the left paren of a deeply nested function and hit Eval. Other language REPLs are really just shells by comparison.