Re^6: Runtime introspection: What good is it?

The big key, imho, is whether or not the language natively provides facilities for that (such as Perl and Ruby) or forces you to write a DSL that does (like C or Haskell).

The other side of that argument is: Why burden all your programs, classes and instances with all the infrastructural overhead of a Domain Generic Language, which is all the greater because it is generic and therfore must cater for all foreseable eventualities, when all you achieve by doing so is the defferal of the construction of the required DSLs--one for each use case--on top of the DGL (MOP), until runtime?

When you could construct one or more DSLs, at compile-time, that have far lower infrastructural requirements because they only build what they need for this particular use, and then apply them to just those programs, classes and instances that need it.

And despite my difficulties with the both the languages (Haskell & Lisp (see Paul Graham's arc)) that exemplify this approach to code construction, I have a great affinity for the principles: brevity==clarity; and YAGNI, that they embody. And it is hard to challenge the results of the approach(*).

(*) Anyone at a loose end next weekend?

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Comment on Re^6: Runtime introspection: What good is it?

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Re^7: Runtime introspection: What good is it? by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Jul 08, 2008 at 13:39 UTC
Your point is well-made. This is why all these languages are embeddable in each other. :-) My criteria for good software: Does it work? Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?	[reply]