The D language basically does that. You can write D programs that evaluate D code at compile time to generate strings of new D code which you can then basically compile-time eval into your code as needed. Combined with the extremely powerful compile-time reflection capabilities of D it's the closest thing I've seen to Lisp metaprogramming outside of that family of languages and it's easier to read than Rust macros or C++ template metaprogramming.
> Combined with the extremely powerful compile-time reflection capabilities of D it's the closest thing I've seen to Lisp metaprogramming outside of that family of languages ...
Scala gets pretty close to LISP-level of metaprogramming support between its intrinsic support for macros[0] (not to be confused with the C/C++ preprocessor of the same name), the Scalameta project[1], and libraries such as Shapeless[2].
Not comparing Scala to D, just identifying a language with similar functionality.
0 - https://docs.scala-lang.org/scala3/reference/metaprogramming...
D is really, really good. I hope it gets more love soon. D's focus on just getting shit done, lightning builds, QOL improvements all over the place, actually good modules, templates and metaprogramming that work, simpler more regular syntax, any memory management paradigm you want, being fully batteries included, being super easy to cross compile, being able to span all the way from Python/C# slop all the way down to tight-as-you-like C code... It's an amazing language and is getting better all the time. A real C++ successor. It has become my secret weapon! Maybe I actually don't want it to blow up soon, since it gives me a huge edge on anyone stuck with C++, which gets worse every release (how slow do builds have to get before people lose it completely?).
Every time I hear about D it sounds awesome. I actually used it to prototype an image collage-composing algorithm which I then rewrote in Scala[1], and the D version might have been nicer to write.
The only reason I didn't write more stuff in D was that the stack traces from my programs were pretty much useless. Maybe I was supposed to set a --better-stack-traces flag when I compiled it or something idk.
[1] One of the algorithms used by https://github.com/TOGoS/PicGrid