What's great about lisps that support modifications to the Reader is that you can go even beyond the standard sugar and use your own characters for some special purpose. (e.g. adding map-syntax with curly braces...)
> (It bugs me that I can't think of a simple example that must be a macro (and not a function), but you get the idea.)
My main three rules: 1) delayed, conditional, repeated, etc. evaluation of arguments 2) compile-time computation for massive optimization potential 3) running or inserting code before or after any of the argument forms (useful for tests--init clean env, run test body, destroy env) or changing the argument forms themselves.
> (It bugs me that I can't think of a simple example that must be a macro (and not a function), but you get the idea.)
My main three rules: 1) delayed, conditional, repeated, etc. evaluation of arguments 2) compile-time computation for massive optimization potential 3) running or inserting code before or after any of the argument forms (useful for tests--init clean env, run test body, destroy env) or changing the argument forms themselves.