[corruptmemory]

Interesting. This is a common perception but not an easily justified one. A macro-system a-la Lisp (or Nemerle) could easily replace compiler plugins, and there is an active compiler plugin community so extensions to the compiler are desirable. As someone who writes in Scala every day for a living and have used the built-in XML support here and there I do not consider Scala syntax to be complex, but the XML support is ~eh~.

Despite limitations and warts it's a pretty nice language to code in on a daily basis if you're going to code on the JVM. Macros would definitely enhance Scala's productivity. If you don't like them don't use them. Certainly doesn't mean that others could not put such a tool to good use.

[cageface]

That's the problem with macros. It's hard enough to read Scala code as it is if the author wants to be clever. Throw in macros and it's game over. In languages with relatively inflexible or primitive syntaxes macros are a blessing but I think they're unnecessary in Scala.