Seems like there have been a variety of attempts to introduce lisp-style macros into non-lisp languages that use traditional syntax rather than s-expressions. I can see how this can succeed for simple macros without sacrificing much. However, complex macros done this way tend to be much more complicated than the equivalent lisp code. Do you believe that Julia solves this problem, or is it also subject to some of the same tradeoffs?
Constructing and manipulating code in Julia is a bit more complicated than Lisp — because Lisp lists are so damned simple. However, not by much. I think most of the complexity of code that generates code is inherent. Sometimes being that meta just makes your brain hurt. Our printf implementation (https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/j/printf.j) is about as bad as it gets and it's still pretty understandable — aside from the inherent complexity of implementing printf and the separation of what's computed at compile time and what's computed at run time.
