[gruseom]

On the other hand, you've got some serious digging to do if you want to understand a clojure macro. Metaprogramming like that is seriously brain twisty

I wish this meme would stop. Your "if you know the language, you can just read it" applies just as much here as it does there.

[rsanders]

I think you can be pretty proficient in writing regular Clojure and still find macros "twisty". Most Clojurians would agree that "The first rule of Macro Club is Dont Write Macros".

[gruseom]

Well, I wish that meme would stop too. It makes macros sound all freakazoid, when really they're just another technique. The obvious and natural and historically standard guidance is "Don't write a macro when a function will do."

[mheiler]

The concrete example is a perfect use case for a macro: In other languages you have to understand and change the compiler implementation to achieve the same effect. That's most likely more work.