Clojure is a lisp that runs on top of Java, JavaScript and a couple of others and has access to all of those libraries via npm and maven Having more libraries

Clojure is a lisp that runs on top of Java, JavaScript and a couple of others and has access to all of those libraries via npm and maven Having more libraries than most languages doesn't nullify the use of macros, macros are usually discouraged in application code because they don't compose well, don't make a macro if a function will do However having macros meant that when go popularised CSP concurrency at the language level it meant we didn't need to change the language (for all variants of Clojure) it just meant we could make a library with macros to do CSP concurrency and it works on the browser on the server etc Completely opt in, well documented as a library and we didn't weigh down the language with this feature, if or when the next big concurrency thing comes along we won't be looking to deprecate go channels from the language Macros are incredibly powerful and you probably won't need them often but for those small cases of scratching a particular itch they're a get out of jail free card