[chriswarbo]

Sounds very related to "shadow languages" ( https://gbracha.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-domain-of-shadows.htm... ) where we add a feature to our language in a very limited form, e.g. imports; then we end up wanting that feature to be a little more powerful, so we add some special case for that, e.g. conditional imports; then we want to use that feature some other way, so we add support for that, e.g. renaming imports; etc.

We end up with a language that has a complicated, limited, special-purpose second-language built in just to handle that feature.

The alternative is to try implementing the feature using existing facilities right from the start, e.g. making imports first-class values that can use the language's own conditionals, variable names, etc. for imports.

We can also go one step further and rather than just trying to re-use the existing language features as they are (e.g. conditionals, variables, etc.), we can ask what new feature could we use to build both the new functionality and the old functionality. That way, rather than e.g. using the built-in conditionals to implement conditional imports, we might decide to something more powerful than both, like macros, and use macros to implement conditional imports and replace the built-in conditionals :)