I think hygiene vs. defmacro is pretty simple: syntax-case is explicit non-hygiene where defmacro is explicit hygiene.
I prefer the former, even though syntax case doesn't go far enough. As it is in r6rs bindings are introduced unhygienically within the extent of a macro transformer, which stinks for complex enough macros. Sadly srfi 72 never caught on.
The benefit of the thing giving us the gimped repl is that the runtime can know what something is at compile time. Modules can be compiled with something akin to blocks in SBCL, speeding up procedure calls in ways you can't really achieve with inline caches.
Chez spends capararively very little time worrying about things like that, yet manages to have cheaper procedure calls than SBCL almost always.
I prefer the former, even though syntax case doesn't go far enough. As it is in r6rs bindings are introduced unhygienically within the extent of a macro transformer, which stinks for complex enough macros. Sadly srfi 72 never caught on.
The benefit of the thing giving us the gimped repl is that the runtime can know what something is at compile time. Modules can be compiled with something akin to blocks in SBCL, speeding up procedure calls in ways you can't really achieve with inline caches.
Chez spends capararively very little time worrying about things like that, yet manages to have cheaper procedure calls than SBCL almost always.