The main difference is that unless you are using an interpreter, you can apply macros at compile-time. Also, without macro you build forms which you must then e

The main difference is that unless you are using an interpreter, you can apply macros at compile-time. Also, without macro you build forms which you must then evaluate: eval cannot access the lexical environment. You need to systematically pass an environment, either at runtime in an interpreter or at compile-time: more boilerplate. To summarize, meta-programming is a recurrent pattern that was abstracted with macros. The defmacro macro itself produces functions like you want to use, except that it integrate them with the macroexpansion facility offered by the environment.