Re:How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language
by kbp on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @06:47AM
(#18228210)
> Nonsense, the enterprise programmer of the time was programming in C or C++ and was making heavy use of macros.
C macros are entirely different in use from Lisp macros. C macros are written in a text substitution language that knows virtually nothing about C, whereas Lisp macros are written in Lisp and operate on regular Lisp data structures. Even trivial things are very difficult to get right with C macros, whereas very complicated things are often elegant and simple with Lisp macros. It's an entirely different experience. They're not at all comparable.
C programmers learn to fear macros because C macros have a lot of problems. Few of those carry over to Lisp macros.
Macros, unlike generics are super easy to implement, so there is no reason not implement them, unless you specifically don't want to implement them.
Java didn't have macros because no one wanted the kind of dialect that macros allow, ie. re-learning a language every time you change company.