From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2006-01-09T07:01:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Ideas on "Why Living Dangerous can be A Good Thing" in Ruby?

On 1/8/06, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:
> Hi --
>
> On Mon, 9 Jan 2006, Gregory Brown wrote:
>
> > How does this sound for a definition:
> >
> > "When code is designed to dynamically write or modify it's own code or
>
> s/'// :-)

Thanks :)

> > other code, this is considered to be Meta-programming.  This often
> > makes heavy use of reflection and introspection, two key tools for
> > dynamic manipulation of code."
>
> I'm not sure I'd say that reflection and introspection (and by the
> way, is there an established difference between those two terms?)

I suppose not, but they were your words.  Perhaps the only difference
between them is that introspection is looking within oneself and
reflection is slightly more general.   Maybe they're the same thing. 
I don't know.

> are "manipulation" techniques.  In fact, they're sort of non-manipulation
> techniques; they give you information about what's going on, without
> actually changing anything.

Right.  I didn't intend to mean that they were manipulation
techniques, but that they were important tools for meta-programming. 
If meta-programming is a manipulation technique, say... giving you a
haircut.  Would you rather use a mirror (reflection) or not? ;)

How can I best rephrase, rewrite, etc the definition to show that
reflection is a key tool for doing manipulation, not something that
does manipulation itself?