It is "cryptic" and "ugly" to you just because you're not familiar with it. You'd pick the macro-based implementation because you are familiar with it.

Seeing this argumentation is so tiresome, because it feels like there is a lack of self-awareness regarding what is "familiar" and what isn't, which is subconsciously translated to "ugly" and "bad".

Have you ever used other (modern) programming languages ?

In a lot of languages, you achieve the same with 1 line of code. It's not about familiarity, it's about the fact that it's a long and convoluted incantation to get the name of an enum.

Why do I have to be familiar with all those weird symbols just to do a trivial thing ?

Update:

Zig:

const Color = enum { red, green, blue };

const name = @tagName(Color.red); // "red"

Rust:

#[derive(Display)]

enum Color { Red, Green, Blue }

let name = Color::Red.to_string(); // "Red"

Clojure:

(name :red) => "red"