If magic was unnuancedly bad we'd all be using assembly. Rust-style macros are a tradeoff; you get constrained magic, localized to the spot where you said `!`. Presenting using them at all in Rust as 'controversial', with a Reddit thread that says nothing of the sort, is disingenuous; proper Rust usage is littered with macros (and the presentation of said 'mantra' would be news to any Lisp user).