Reflection for the Masses Export

@article{citeulike:3268576, abstract = {A reflective programming language provides means to render explicit what is typically abstracted away in its language constructs in an on-demand style. In the early 1980's, Brian Smith introduced a gen- eral recipe for building reflective programming languages with the notion of procedural reflection. It is an excellent framework for understanding and comparing various metaprogramming and reflective approaches, in- cluding macro programming, first-class environments, first-class contin- uations, metaob ject protocols, aspect-oriented programming, and so on. Unfortunately, the existing literature of Brian Smith's original account of procedural reflection is hard to understand: It is based on terminology derived from philosophy rather than computer science, and takes con- cepts for granted that are hard to reconstruct without intimate knowl- edge of historical Lisp dialects from the 1960's and 1970's. We attempt to untangle Smith's original account of procedural reflection and make it accessible to a new and wider audience. On the other hand, we then use its terminological framework to analyze other metaprogramming and reflective approaches, especially those that came afterwards.}, author = {Herzeel, Charlotte and Costanza, Pascal and D'hondt, Theo}, citeulike-article-id = {3268576}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://p-cos.net/documents/s32008.pdf}, keywords = {computing, language-design, lisp, reflection}, posted-at = {2008-09-15 10:19:37}, priority = {3}, title = {Reflection for the Masses}, url = {http://p-cos.net/documents/s32008.pdf} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:3268576 L3 - citeulike-article-id:3268576 N2 - A reflective programming language provides means to render explicit what is typically abstracted away in its language constructs in an on-demand style. In the early 1980’s, Brian Smith introduced a gen- eral recipe for building reflective programming languages with the notion of procedural reflection. It is an excellent framework for understanding and comparing various metaprogramming and reflective approaches, in- cluding macro programming, first-class environments, first-class contin- uations, metaob ject protocols, aspect-oriented programming, and so on. Unfortunately, the existing literature of Brian Smith’s original account of procedural reflection is hard to understand: It is based on terminology derived from philosophy rather than computer science, and takes con- cepts for granted that are hard to reconstruct without intimate knowl- edge of historical Lisp dialects from the 1960’s and 1970’s. We attempt to untangle Smith’s original account of procedural reflection and make it accessible to a new and wider audience. On the other hand, we then use its terminological framework to analyze other metaprogramming and reflective approaches, especially those that came afterwards. TI - Reflection for the Masses KW - computing KW - language-design KW - lisp KW - reflection AU - Herzeel, Charlotte AU - Costanza, Pascal AU - D’hondt, Theo UR - http://p-cos.net/documents/s32008.pdf ER -