Learn the advanced macro techniques that matter in real Clojure code: hygiene, composition boundaries, recursive generation, and helpful macro errors.
Advanced macros are not a license to generate clever code. They are tools for keeping a proven pattern readable once the function-first alternatives have failed.
| Technique | Use it to protect |
|---|---|
| Hygiene | Caller names and generated names do not collide. |
| Composition | Small macro steps remain reviewable. |
| Recursion | Repeated code generation has a clear base case. |
| Error handling | Invalid macro calls fail near the call site with useful data. |
For Java engineers, the standard remains the same as with generated source: if the expansion is hard to read, the abstraction is not ready for shared production code.