I was speaking to the ORM situation, or lack-thereof the parent seemed to be expressing.

Regarding macros - Gleam has stated they are interested in adding metaprogramming, but it's not a huge priority because of the goals of the language.

Macros, and metaprogramming in general have a tendency to complicate a language, and encourages ad-hoc DSL's. One of Gleam's goals is to be dead simple to pick up, read, and contribute - metaprogramming makes that much harder.

Macros are not necessary, even if their absence is a bit of a shock at first. I used to firmly think they were necessary, but now my mind has changed on this for the most part.