[dagss]

Has anyone worked on Lisp-like macros in Go? Executing code at compile time to emit AST and compile it.. That is what I feel is really missing. Even with strictly a compile-time phase (no run-time macro evaluation) it could be quite useful.

Starting with generics seem to lead down the dark path of C++ template metaprogramming..

I would rather do something like

type StrBox = MakeBoxType!(string)

...and have clean hygienic macros to generate my "generic". Syntax candy can be added to that to get generics...but starting with generics and only supporting that went really really badly for the C++ ecosystem.

[kodablah]

Completely agree. Go has parsing and type checking and what not as part of its stdlib. However they choose a code generation approach which is a separate step and often relies on code comments. Even if security fears of compile time execution were allayed, the Go stewards are very unlikely to support altering the very strict-yet-simple grammar for multiple reasons. Macros would be very welcome, but they can't help improve the language if the language is intentionally inflexible.