Chapter 16. The Magic of Lisp Macros

Macro programming allows you to mess around inside your Lisp compiler/interpreter to turn Lisp into your own custom programming language. When faced with a difficult programming challenge, many experienced Lispers will first ask themselves, “What programming language could I use to make this problem easy to solve?” Then they’ll use macros to convert Lisp into that language!

No other programming language possesses such a simple and comprehensive macro system. One can even argue that it would be impossible to add this feature to other programming languages, for a simple reason: The Lisp languages are the only ones in which computer code and program data are made out of the same “stuff.” As discussed many times ...

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