I was not alone...

Bob Congdon mentions Steve Bourne (author of the Bourne Shell) was using a set of C-macros which allowed him to code in an ALGOL-like fashion.

During the mid-/late-80s I was "famous" for using a hand-crafted PASCAL.H header file which made my C-source code look like PASCAL. Of course, this was just ridiculous and made it much harder for us to use any source-code browsers etc. which almost always barfed when trying to "parse" our "pascalized" C-code.

From today's point of view, my only excuse is that I was way too young back then.

Anyway, to close on a more serious and less reminiscent note: Of course, using macros to disguise one language as another is bullshit. If you keep your methods short (because you're refactoring mercilessly, don't you?), a new and potentially unfamiliar syntax shouldn't get in your way.

Syntax doesn't matter. Writing bad code is easy. Writing great code is hard. Doesn't matter what language you're using.