> There is real, palpable, practical, functional difference between working a Lisp REPL and a REPL in a non-homoiconic languages
And it's false. There's nothing special about a REPL in a homoiconic language. Homoiconicity has nothing to do with a REPL or tools.
I do however think SBCL has a very nice environment with great tools (especially it's compiler) and that's why I've used it a lot over the years, but I really think you underestimate the environments in other languages (including the "holistic, overall experience").
You are wrong. You might be correct about the workflow but still wrong about the semantics. Pedantically, your notion is false, because homoiconism gives the REPL a genuine capability (program-as-manipulable-data across the read/eval boundary) that non-homoiconic REPLs lack.