Is metaprogramming useful?

[Brad Anderson]

Steve Horne wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:47:10 -0500, Brad Anderson <brad at dsource.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> I don't think this is the primary reason.  As mentioned before, syntax is a
>> part of it, but so is the total power given to the programmer.  This power
>> leads to a lack of standard or cohesive libs, b/c it's so easy to make it
>> exactly the way you want it.  I imagine that if some of the D power users
>> wrapped themselves in Lisp for a while, they'd be able to do for themselves
>> what they beg Walter to do for them in D.
> 
> Not really.
> 
> There are things you just can't do with Scheme macros. Associativity
> and precedence, for instance. This means that if you want to do these
> things, you have to go the Von Neumann route - treat code as data and
> manipulate it at compile time using Scheme functions.

I'm not following.  Do you have definitions or examples of these?  I did find
this...

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1605

Not trying to be thick,
BA