I think of Lisp vs. Python similarly to PostScript vs PDF. In PostScript you have a full language, can do anything but you often have to do it yourself. PDF's a

I think of Lisp vs. Python similarly to PostScript vs PDF. In PostScript you have a full language, can do anything but you often have to do it yourself. PDF's aren't extensible but have _just about_ all the functionality you need to produce a document. An example of macros you often see is surrounding a block of code with open/close pairs to make sure you don't exit the code leaving dangling resources. File open/close, database connections, etc. Python has the __enter__ and __exit__ protocols to handle that. You can't do every bit of metaprogramming in Python, but over the years they've covered close to every contingency a developer comes across.