> many of the really interesting language features within Clojure are built upon macros

That's true with any lisp. But that doesn't mean the the ability to write macros is a requirement for most development work on a daily basis, and homoiconicity is often touted as amazing specifically because of its help in writing macros. Therefore, since writing macros is not super common or necessary most of the time, I would say that "code as data" is also not a big deal most of the time.

I really like lisp, I just don't think some of its unique features are as big a deal as they advertise.