* don't think you know anything about the use-cases for Lisp macros. It's a standard practice to use them to generate documents (most CL HTML generating libraries are just sets of macros), configuration information (SQL schemas, XML) for other systems, and programs in other languages (for example, this is how Parenscript compiles Lisp to JavaScript).*
Maybe I don't know the Lisp uses cases for writing conceptual docs, but I must say that this sounds horrible. But clearly each to their own... when all you have is a hammer. I'd much rather use just about any templating system (and there are many) than any language (or preprocessing system) that I've ever encountered.
I don't understand this.
In C, the only way to know the impact of macros on code is to build it (preprocess it). And macros have global effect on the code, so you don't know, when looking at any piece of code in C, what it actually does, unless you look at it preprocessed -- for the most part. This means pulling in the build system, since obviously you don't know what is being pulled from where otherwise.
Maybe I don't know the Lisp uses cases for writing conceptual docs, but I must say that this sounds horrible. But clearly each to their own... when all you have is a hammer. I'd much rather use just about any templating system (and there are many) than any language (or preprocessing system) that I've ever encountered.
I don't understand this.
In C, the only way to know the impact of macros on code is to build it (preprocess it). And macros have global effect on the code, so you don't know, when looking at any piece of code in C, what it actually does, unless you look at it preprocessed -- for the most part. This means pulling in the build system, since obviously you don't know what is being pulled from where otherwise.