Urusan

In modern programming languages, is there less of a need for programming macros?

Note: This isn't about application macros or specific languages that lean heavily on macros such that there's no other (reasonable) way to accomplish something.

No, it's a useful feature
64.5%
Yes, thanks to improved language design
22.6%
Programming macros were never good
12.9%
Poll ended at .
May 20, 2022 at 5:30pmWeb
Show threadDigital Mark λ ☕️ 🌮 🚀 🌗May 20, 2022

@urusan Any language without macros* is broken and cripples the minds of those who use it.

* Semantic macros, ones that can change program structure. Merely syntax macros like C's are vastly harder to make big changes with.

There are some nearly-equivalently-powerful systems, like monkey-patching in Smalltalk, Obj-C, or Ruby, but they're still worse for not having semantic macros.

Show threadfelixMay 20, 2022
@urusan depends on the type of language. In Java there are no macros, instead you have reflection. I suspect that other jit/interpreted languages have similar escape hatches for when the language itself cant do something. In aot languages like Rust, macros are a similar escape hatch.
Show threadJohn KaniarzMay 21, 2022
@urusan the second option is compatible with the the other two. Most modern languages have formalized replacements for common macro uses such as templates, named constants, and inlined functions. Yet they haven’t completely replaced all the uses of macros.