> To illustrate, Rust macros are basically that. They have a substantially different syntax to normal Rust code that make it very difficult to quickly grok what is going on. It's a net negative IMO, not a positive.
Yeah, more like a syntax extension than macro. But I am saying that you need both. Some time you need powerful macro ability to extend the language. Sometime you just need templating to achieve the expressiveness. With LISP, I get it that you are programming all the time, never templating, right? But I guess you only appreciate templating when you use your macro system as a general purpose system . The benefit of general purpose macro systems is you only learn one tool for all languages, rather than re-learn the individual wheels. And when you judge a language, you no longer bothered by its syntactic warts because you can always fix the expressive part with your macro-layer.
Yeah, more like a syntax extension than macro. But I am saying that you need both. Some time you need powerful macro ability to extend the language. Sometime you just need templating to achieve the expressiveness. With LISP, I get it that you are programming all the time, never templating, right? But I guess you only appreciate templating when you use your macro system as a general purpose system . The benefit of general purpose macro systems is you only learn one tool for all languages, rather than re-learn the individual wheels. And when you judge a language, you no longer bothered by its syntactic warts because you can always fix the expressive part with your macro-layer.