On: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

[lispm]

> I see the claim of "you can write a macro to do it" for any imaginable feature all the time, but it is simply not true.

Which is not surprising. Actually nobody with a clue makes such a claim.

Still, Lisp macros have a wide variety of very useful applications.

> Yes, your language is extendable, but your extensions are limited to computation and source-to-source transformation at compile time.

Still quite useful. From relatively simple stuff which makes to code more readable to complex macros like ITERATE.

[Blackthorn → lispm]

You'll note that I never said it was not useful, but rather it was not this powerful magic sauce that can do anything.

> Which is not surprising. Actually nobody with a clue makes such a claim.

Most Lisp books make this claim.

[lispm → Blackthorn]

> Most Lisp books make this claim.

For sure not.