APL was one of the first interactive environments along with Lisp. They've had this back when you had a typewriter with a rotating ball with the symbols connected to the time share computer. So you'd type an expression on the typewriter, computer would run it, and it would be printed on actual paper lol.

With APL you can also do the stuff you're referring to by creating a function and mapping it to a list of numbers. If you're familiar with REPLs, the experience is similar.