Via Loper OS, here’s Vladimir Sedach on Lisp macros. He points out that the purpose of programming is automation and that once having realized that the next question is, “How can we automate our programming?” Sedach goes on to argue that macros are the only general system we have for that—they are, after all, little programs that write code—and that not having macros means that you don’t understand why you are writing code. He make some other, less controversial, points as well.
It’s a good read and at only 5 short paragraphs it will only take you a minute or two to do so. If you like it, you might want to head over to Loper OS to see what Stanislav Datskovskiy has to say about it.