Editing Metaprogramming (section)

{{Short description|Programming paradigm}}
{{About|the computer programming technique|the management technique|Charles Simonyi}}
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'''Metaprogramming''' is a [[computer programming]] technique in which [[computer program]]s have the ability to treat other programs as their [[data]]. It means that a program can be designed to read, generate, analyse, or transform other programs, and even modify itself, while running.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sondergaard |first1=Harald |date=2013 |url=https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/view/2013/COMP90053 |title=Course on Program Analysis and Transformation |access-date=18 September 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Czarnecki |first1=Krzysztof |author-link1=Krzysztof Czarnecki |last2=Eisenecker |first2=Ulrich W. |date=2000 |title=Generative Programming |publisher=Addison Wesley |isbn=0-201-30977-7}}</ref> In some cases, this allows programmers to minimize the number of lines of code to express a solution, in turn reducing development time.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Walker|first1=Max|title=The Art of Metaprogrmming in Java|url=https://newcircle.com/s/post/1267/the_art_of_metaprogramming_in_java_video_jaxconf|website=New Circle|access-date=28 January 2014}}</ref> It also allows programs more flexibility to efficiently handle new situations with no recompiling.

Metaprogramming can be used to move computations from [[Runtime (program lifecycle phase)|runtime]] to [[compile time]], to generate code using [[Compile-time function execution|compile time computations]], and to enable [[self-modifying code]]. The ability of a [[programming language]] to be its own [[metalanguage]] allows [[reflective programming]], and is termed ''reflection''.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Krauss|first1=Aaron|title=Programming Concepts: Type Introspection and Reflection|url=https://thesocietea.org/2016/02/programming-concepts-type-introspection-and-reflection/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160310192057/https://thesocietea.org/2016/02/programming-concepts-type-introspection-and-reflection/ |access-date=10 March 2016|archive-date=10 March 2016 }}</ref> Reflection is a valuable language feature to facilitate metaprogramming.

Metaprogramming was popular in the 1970s and 1980s using list processing languages such as [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]]. [[Lisp machine]] hardware gained some notice in the 1980s, and enabled applications that could process code. They were often used for [[artificial intelligence]] applications.