We'll need a mechanism to suppress evaluation (quote '), we want a mechanism to trigger evaluation in a quote (unquote ,) but because we aren't barbarians we don't allow unquoting inside a quote since that would be confusing, so unquote is only meaningful in a quasiquote (ie, a quote that allows unquoting ~) and then there is splice syntax (;) because that is a convenient operation. That is a mumbo-jumbo explanation and the real one involves some treatment of the read-eval-print loop, symbol resolution and whatnot I dunno about Janet; but it isn't that badly wrong.

It is annoying to use the first few times because macros demand an unusually precise understanding about how evaluation works, but that is to some extent the point of the article - working through some things that could be misunderstood about how to build an unevaluated blob of code. It'll look weird to people who use languages without macros because there isn't a reason to get into the weeds of evaluation ... unless writing new syntax with macros.