📝Lisp exposes two levels of syntax (s-expressions and lisp forms)
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While regular languages expose compiler/interpreter as a single black box (text in, executable out), Lisp exposes two black boxes: reader and evaluator.
The reader defines how strings are translated into Lisp objects (s-expressions). The evaluator defines the semantics of Lisp forms that are built out of s-expressions.
This has multiple consequences:
s-expressions can be used as a data serialization format (not necessarily code)
because semantics are defined in terms of Lisp objects, it’s easier to generate code within the language than to generate code as text.
you can easily generate code by manipulating data and that is the basis of Lisp macros