[Abhinav2000]

I think this is a very valid viewpoint. Typically its better not to learn / use macros until one is sufficiently advanced, functions will do for 99.5% of the circumstances, to call a famous author ;-)

You should try it out. The book Common Lisp Recipes by Edi Weitz is really good and practical - you can get web servers up and running in minutes, and has many other practical uses (I have to check the contents again, but its about 750 pages long and covers stuff like interfacing with C and Java), highly recommended if you want to get productive in Lisp!