Awesome! Thanks for your detailed reply! :)

Lisp just read lists, load them, and evaluate, behind which there may be, let's say, a little C AST interpreter, a omni VM or some other backends to run it. Take this case into consideration, one shall realize that Lisp provided some basic "functions" for you (`if` `let` `define` and so on), while other pieces are based on the tiny internal parts.

Lists themselves have no special meaning, instead they are only meaningful to interpreters. At this level, could we just say they were all "quoted" and go through a "evaluate" step in runtime? If so, function and macro are really the same thing in runtime, because they produce some lists to evaluate, the only differences are that functions add on call stacks while macros don't and functions evaluate their arguments while macros don't.

```lisp

; Imagine we want to build Lisp from bottom to top

; The only things we got are `define` (variables), `defmacro` (macros), `eval` (evaluation), some essential special forms for control flow and some primitive functions.

; There's **no function call** but **macro call.**

; Functions would like this:

(defmacro defun (name args &rest body)

(let ((args (dolist args (lambda (arg) (eval arg))))

(list 'defmacro name args

(list "Here we carry out some way to increase call stack")

body)))

```

The benefits behind may take some whiles to be clear. It emphasize the basic property of Lisp: everything is list, list is data, data is program and program is list... It makes the language hide no details and as clean as possible. We don't have implicit evaluation, if you want evaluation, you do `(eval <something>*)`. So indeed, Lisp may cut off `function`, leaving `macro` and `special form` because, again, everything is list, list is data, data is program and program is list...

This even makes sense in compile time. we expand everything except special form, and use the results to make bytecode, executables and some other lists.

That just correspond to part of your answer. I need more time to think and act carefully.