Beg to disagree, eric256. Just as programmers need to learn to be businessmen/women, rather than just getting crunched, programmers also need to learn to become meta-programmers. I was just (rightly) chasened in another thread for dissing programmers who poke around in Perl interpreter code looking for neat stuff, because those are the guys who build the modules I use in doing my job. If we don't build the tools, and, now, the self-improving tools, somebody else will.
There are a bunch of damn good programmers over in Bulgaria who have released the most diabolical un-killable viruses I have ever seen, and sooner or later one of them is going to tackle such an idea. Either way, simple programming is going to become more automated, and a tool such as I am describing is not that far away.
Just as SoC designers now use automated tools to design megagate chips, we now use templating systems like Embperl which are smart enough to automatically build tables for us.
Perl is a tough nut even to do what I suggest for, because it isn't an easily parsable language. That doesn't mean that we can't build something extremely useful, just that we have to be canny and crafty... and awfully damn good. | [reply] |