"Having a proper hygienic macro system (instead of C's very limited string-replacement "macros" or C++ template hell) is a really helpful abstraction, and the compile-time stuff you can do can basically act as a build system."

Exactly. I long ago came to the conclusion that any modern systems language should have a hygienic, macro system to balance productivity/maintenance against performance. Just makes things so much easier. That morons can abuse it is no reason not to have it in the language as they abuse everything haha.