Metaprogramming

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Metaprogramming is a computer 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 more flexibility to efficiently handle new situations with no recompiling.

Metaprogramming can be used to move computations from runtime 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 allows reflective programming, and is termed 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 machine hardware gained some notice in the 1980s, and enabled applications that could process code. They were often used for artificial intelligence applications.