Hey I come from Python too and I just want to put out there both that Nim is a normal language - you can use it without templates or macros (you might end up using someone else's macro because some stdlib or library is implemented as one, but you don't have to write them yourself) - but also that Nim's macros are quite easy to understand!
They are just functions that take an AST tree, modify that AST or produce a new AST and return it. Its just normal Nim code working on an AST object. That's it! I wrote a small blog article about them when I first learned about them: http://blog.ldlework.com/a-cursory-look-at-meta-programming-...
I was just comparing to C++ - where you have to understand how everything about templates and the STL works if you intend to understand the error messages produced by the compiler if you use STL. Or any library that interacts with STL containers. I heard things on this front have improved - I myself have left C++ for C a while ago.
C++ is a monstrosity. A common advice is "just pick the parts you like and stick to them". But it never works that way - as soon as you interact with 3rd party code, you have to deal with the parts THEY liked.
In comparison, my intuition says that despite all the dark corners (and if you read the entire manual, there are quite a few of them), that's not the case with Nim; Instead, if you treat it like a dialect of Python, you'll get simplicity close to Python; You'd only need to understand those dark corners if you plan to make use of them.
But I will need actual experience in Nim to find support for or against this intuition.
They are just functions that take an AST tree, modify that AST or produce a new AST and return it. Its just normal Nim code working on an AST object. That's it! I wrote a small blog article about them when I first learned about them: http://blog.ldlework.com/a-cursory-look-at-meta-programming-...
I encourage you to conquer your fears!