Levi's Lisp Log

The Art of Metaprogramming

A technique I've found very useful lately, both at work and in hobby programming, is metaprogramming. That is, using programs to generate other programs. At work, I generate a large amount of C data structure initialization code from a spreadsheet and a Python script. It makes updating the data trivial and integrates right into the build process, eliminating all sorts of possibilities for errors.

There's a series of articles on DeveloperWorks covering the Art of Metaprogramming; see part 1 and part 2. Of course, they introduce Scheme, which is certainly one of the best languages to use for metaprogramming. Enjoy!