Metaprogramming

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Metaprogramming is a programming technique in which computer programs 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.^[1][2] In some cases, this allows programmers to minimize the number of lines of code to express a solution, in turn reducing development time.^[3] It also allows programs a greater flexibility to efficiently handle new situations without recompilation.

Metaprogramming can be used to move computations from run-time to compile-time, to generate code using compile time computations, and to enable self-modifying code. The ability of a programming language to be its own metalanguage is called reflection.^[4] Reflection is a valuable language feature to facilitate metaprogramming.

Metaprogramming was popular in the 1970s and 1980s using list processing languages such as LISP. LISP hardware machines were popular in the 1980s and enabled applications that could process code. They were frequently used for artificial intelligence applications.