>>17
Rust was indeed initially marketed as "an ML in C syntax with one small trick!" Then they realised the niche is already filled. They later got rid of the garbage collector, green threads etc and it all went in a completely direction from then on.
>>21
It's based on Macro-by-Example (same as `syntax-rules` and `syntax-case` but most likely inspired directly from `syntax-parse`), just like C++ templates, except it's significantly less hamstrung and they're honest about it. It's surprisingly simple to use. It uses syntax classes (hence `syntax-parse`) to get around the sexpless macro problem, presumably directly based on works of Matthew Flatt (see his experimental C-syntaxed language Honu for the proof-of-concept).