>>45
Please read the paper in >>41, it is an easy-to-understand demonstration of Lisp-style macros.
We can only guess what Minsky meant when he said "open future" and Lisp programs writing Lisp programs, but to me macros make the most sense. Macros let the programmer easily extend the semantics of the language, they can implement any construct they can dream up without having to lobby the standards committee to maybe include it in some future revision. Macros work by generating (writing) Lisp code, so they fit the description, although I can't make much sense of what he means by "verb" here. If you read the transcription closely it will also be clear that Minsky does not say that C is subject to strange limitations, but that programming is, and the strange limitation is the lack of this "open future", that is, that the programmer can't easily extend the semantics of the language from the language itself, because Lisps are dying off instead of gaining mainstream adaptation.
You are the first one to bring up necessity. I don't think anyone here claimed that macros were necessary. Minsky did not in the video, that's sure. There are different styles of programming, and having macros gives an opportunity to program in a very unique style. Minsky was a computer scientist, so obviously he must have found this very exciting. I understand that you greyface business-types can't comprehend this and will want some tangible competitive advantage, but you will just have to accept that different people work differently. We could be all writing C, there's nothing necessary in having Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk, OCaml, Python or Java, yet I still believe we are better off having the option to choose among them.