If you're asking about the visual difference between continuous lighting and strobes, all other things being equal--you can generally get similar lighting effects with either.
Strobes will stop action, so if this is for portraits, you'll notice that even with relatively still subjects the part of the image that's in focus will be sharper with strobes. Strobes are more powerful, so you have more flexibility in choice of aperture to control depth of field. Strobes are balanced for daylight and tend to be very consistent in color, which is an advantage if you want to shoot daylight film or mix strobe and daylight without having to gel the strobe. For very precise studio work, though, some photographers measure the light with a color meter and always gel the lights.
Things are not, in fact, equal though. Continuous fresnel spots seem to have their own effect, though I have a fresnel strobe made out of a continuous lighting fixture that's as close to a theatrical fresnel as one can get with a strobe. Banks of fluorescent lights have their own look. Window light is its own thing, but you can get pretty close to it with a softbox.
The main principle to keep in mind is that the larger the light source relative to the subject (so a light source that is close to the subject is larger than the same light source at a greater distance), the softer the light.
