Steve Yegge v. Rich Hickey re: "Clojure just needs to start saying Yes"

Re:Steve Yegge v. Rich Hickey re: "Clojure just needs to sta... by bitsai on Wednesday April 20, 2011 @12:18PM (#2467199)

> The guy he cites who declared macros evil is obviously not a part of 'mainstream' Clojure culture

I think Yegge was referring to Christophe Grand's talk on DSL's and macros. Grand has written several notable Clojure libraries, so I do consider him part of 'mainstream' Clojure culture. But he didn't say "macros are dangerous and you should never use them". Quoting Phil Hagelberg's response in the linked discussion:

  The talk I saw was about how functions are generally more
  composable than macros, so they should be the first tool
  you reach for. I think it was more directed at folks who
  come to lisp and are drunk with the power of macros.
 
  (Assuming it was this talk: http://clojure.blip.tv/file/4522250/)

Towards the end of the talk, Grand discusses how macros can be useful for optimizing or adding syntactic sugar to DSL's.

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Re:Steve Yegge v. Rich Hickey re: "Clojure just needs to sta... by tomfaulhaber on Wednesday April 20, 2011 @04:40PM (#2468279)

This is not a "Clojure thing."

The advice to noobs not to go hog wild with macros is common among experienced Lisp programmers in all dialects. Paul Graham himself refers to it in _On Lisp_: Chapter 8 is titled "When to Use Macros" and the first section is "When Nothing Else Will Do."

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