Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 13, numbers 3 and 4, 2020 // View article

On the Realization of Meta-Circular Code Generation and Two-Sided Collaborative Metaprogramming

Authors:
Herwig Mannaert
Koen De Cock
Peter Uhnák
Jan Verelst

Keywords: Evolvability, meta-circularity, normalized systems, automatic programming; case study

Abstract:
The automated generation of source code is a widely adopted technique to improve the productivity of computer programming. Normalized Systems Theory (NST) aims to create software systems exhibiting a proven degree of evolvability. A software implementation exists to create skeletons of Normalized Systems (NS) applications, based on automatic code generation. This paper describes how the NS model representation, and the corresponding code generation, has been made meta-circular, and presents its detailed architecture. It is argued that this feature may be crucial to improve the productivity of metaprogramming, as it enables scalable collaboration based on two-sided interfaces. Some preliminary results from applying this approach in practice are presented and discussed.

Pages: 149 to 159

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2020. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2020

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628