Meta - What are some things you should know how to do before learning about macro programming?

[Reeza]

There are constantly questions on here about how to convert something to a macro or how to automate something. Many times, the answer is a macro is not required. So, for new users, what would be some things you think a user should understand before they start tackling macro programming?*

Two that come to top of my mind are:

• Arrays
• By Group processing

*Yes, there are certain circumstances where a macro is the only way to solve a problem. 

[Patrick]

@Reeza 

Data Step Concepts - content you find here: 

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl//en/lrcon/69852/HTML/default/viewer.htm#titlepage.htm

[PGStats]

One should be taught, in that order:

1 - data _null_ steps for writing code to a file, to be later included
2 - call execute()
3 - the macro facility

So that the later would be understood for what it is (i.e. Not a programming language).

[Kurt_Bremser]

To properly make use of by-group-processing, one needs to understand proper data modeling and how to transpose wide data, either by using arrays or proc transpose.

[noling]

You can't create a macro variable in a datastep then reference it in the same datastep! Order of operations for compilation vs execution time matters!