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OK, but what about the homoiconicity and syntax macros?

I don't know Ansible well enough to say for sure, but the macro example seems like more of a C preprocessor style "macro." I don't see how it's doing anything more than filling in a template.

It's executed at runtime, not before some compilation stage.

"What is homoiconicity then? Typical definitions state that it is simply “code as data”, will point to a relationship between a program’s structure and syntax or note that the program source is expressed in a primitive data-type of the language. In the below, we will show that none of these definitions make much sense."

https://www.expressionsofchange.org/dont-say-homoiconic/

In this context it seems to refer to programming in a language where the developer facing code is represented in terms of data structure literals within the language. It's a reasonable understanding of what is usually meant in a Lisp-like setting. The code is a list, so you can trivially construct and deconstruct executable lists, just like you can trivially construct data carrying lists.

One could make clever quips that this isn't enough, you need quote/unquote as well to make it practical, and is that really implied by homoiconicity? Should we really use this word? Maybe we should pay someone to make up a new one?

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