Again, I'm not asking for a word that describes a property of a language. I want a word that describes certain kinds of applications.
My previous suggestion of *meta-application* is probably not too good either in that it is currently used to refer to operating-system like software -- software that manipulates applications. So now I'm thinking about *application schema*. Admittedly that's moving in the direction of *application template*. Part of my quest is that I want a word that describes application code that can be parametrized in certain ways. *Template *all by itself is just too general in that it doesn't imply that the template is for an application. Lots of things can be templated in a language that supports templates. That's fine but that's not what I want to say. -- Russ On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Dale Schumacher <[email protected]>wrote: > The term "meta-circular" describes a language characteristic that enables > meta-programming. It means that the mechanisms needed to define the > semantics of a language are available to programmers _in_ the language > itself. This leads to support for internal Domain Specific Languages and > other higher-order techniques. In a recent interview, John McCarthy said > that is was important for a language to have access to it's own parse-tree. > I consider that a weak form of meta-circularity, but the right intent is > communicated. > > > On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 12:24 AM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]>wrote: > >> WRT the original quest, I realize that the trail is probably cold for most >> of the list by now and that tangential discussions have now generated more >> interest, but I think I have a reasonable answer. >> >> In functional programming map and reduce are often called *meta-functions >> *. GA, GP, Ant Colony Optimization, etc. are often called * >> meta-heuristics*. *Meta programming* is even in Wikipedia referring to >> programs that manipulate other programs. *Meta-programming* is a bit too >> general for what I'm after since a compiler is a meta-program and that's not >> really the point. But *meta-application* may do the trick. >> >> Thanks for all your help. >> >> -- Russ >> > >
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