Sure, while you could distribute, but that's over-complicating the plumbing, as it were, and the distributive property really should only apply when there are variables involved. Otherwise, the work needs to be simplified. Before PEMDAS is applied, all like terms that can be combined and simplified must be combined and simplified.
The technical argument: you're not just distributing the 2, but the whole of "8 / 2".
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