The author seems sensitive to the argument that Arc is "just" a bunch of macros. To me saying that Arc is "just" macros is like saying that Haskell is "just" a

The author seems sensitive to the argument that Arc is "just" a bunch of macros. To me saying that Arc is "just" macros is like saying that Haskell is "just" a translator that rewrites functional programs into Von Neumann instructions. No, I am wrong. Saying that Arc is just a bunch of macros is saying that the difficulty of the implementation is more important than the value provided by the resulting product. It seems very close to arguing that OS X is equivalent to Windows because they both run on PCs. There may be an argument that Arc doesn't break new ground or introduce new semantics or that it doesn't make it easy to solve a problem that other PLs have a difficult time solving. But "just a bunch of macros" is not that argument. I wouldn't bother with an entire blog post just to refute it.