[derefr]

The problem is that C is a "lingua franca" and yet has no inherent facility for compile-time codegen (i.e. "real", grammar-level macros, as opposed to C's lever-level macros), so you need something else (whether that be the venerable m4 or yacc, or random Python scripts) to serve as your substitute for "real" macros.

In languages that do have "real" macros, you don't see the same problem. (On the other hand, in most of them, you see a need to call out to a C compiler to generate FFI code, which is sometimes just as bad when you're using a PL with a managed runtime and your build-env didn't otherwise have any need for a C toolchain.)