It seems to me that macros are defined much too often in the Julia ecosystem and the (error-prone) definitions of such macros are often very complex. FWIW, the Julia Manual page on metaprogramming already heavily discourages defining macros: eval and defining new macros should be typically used a…

Me and nsajko launched our posts simultaneously, can somebody please merge them? [image] General Registry: Create tag for macro usage New to Julia In a recent discussion about newbie friendliness, the topic about macros came up. Someone suggested, that it may be beneficia…

[image] nsajko: Are these ideas good? This seems very arbitrary. Almost any feature can be misused and punishing someone in this kind of way for using a language feature feels off.

We don’t even block automerge for packages that have no tests. We don’t enforce standards at the package registry level. I can imagine we might start to do some basic ones, like the aforementioned tests being required, but I can’t imagine we will ever have the something as subjective as this in t…

I mostly push back on excessive macro use by using this quote from @stevengj 's 2019 JuliaCon keynote. Functions are mostly good enough for Jeff Bezanson. Don’t try to outsmart Jeff Bezanson. [slide conveying above information] Video: https://youtu.be/mSgXWpvQEHE?t=578

[image] nsajko: One way of discouraging unnecessary definition of macros would be to disable automatic merging (automerge) for General registry packages when the package includes a macro definition (perhaps with the restriction that the macro name is public instead of just internal). Another pot…

blocking automerge is a very heavy handed approach to influencing the ecosystem and creates a lot of manual work for registry maintainers. I think it should be used very sparingly, and something like defining a macro is a totally legit thing for a package to do. IMO if you want to influence folks y…

To me this seems plausible, at least to mark the registration PR with a macro label and/or extend the the auto-merging period. [I’ve never second-guess anyone on adding a macro, also since I might not know, I have blocked some package registrations for other reasons, and occasionally look at code be…

[image] nsajko: A more conservative approach would perhaps be to only do this when the definition of the macro crosses some complexity threshold. This seems backwards. Unnecessary @eval and macros tend to simply tweak and paste the input into existing language structures. On the other hand, v…

I feel like macros in Julia are a quite self-regulating because they are difficult to implement. At least every time I’ve written a non-trivial macro it quickly turned into “This is really hard… Is there any way I can do this without writing a macro?” As such, I don’t see that there is a problem wi…

[image] goerz: Certainly, macros are very much at the core of the language (@test, @assert, @show, @warn, @printf, …) and calling them is completely normal. Thats what the other thread is trying to convey: It might be obvious to you, but currently, there is not clear, explicit teaching, that …

How to discourage macros: disable automerge of General registry PRs?

Internals & Design

ShalokShalom October 3, 2023, 8:45am 2

Me and nsajko launched our posts simultaneously, can somebody please merge them?

Topic		Replies	Views
Heavy macro use or not? Community	24	1220	June 5, 2024
General Registry: Create tag for macro usage New to Julia	7	530	October 3, 2023
Why distinguish macro names with @? Internals & Design	47	1926	May 14, 2022
How to warn new users away from metaprogramming Internals & Design question , proposal	27	6930	November 6, 2022
Mixin and parameter packages: How many macros is too many macros? Community question , announcement	10	1565	May 11, 2018

How to discourage macros: disable automerge of General registry PRs?

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