Preface

“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”

– Martin Golding

In the world of software, there are so many things that can go wrong and often do go wrong. We’re a relatively young industry that is in an ever-changing state. Things haven’t settled and innovation happens at lightning speed. It’s not like carpentry, which has had a few thousand years of experience of what works and what doesn’t. In software, we’re still inventing the tools and reinventing them as we go. The business benefit and the possibility to increase productivity for our end users sets the expectations high and in an increasingly competitive market, time to market is of the essence.

At the level we write our software today, we have a huge potential to leverage the metadata surrounding our own code to ensure the quality and maintainability of the software we write. This is where the metaprogramming journey starts.

Metaprogramming can be really fun to work with, but it represents true opportunities for developers and businesses to set themselves apart. Things that metaprogramming can do for you include the following:

• Improve the maintainability of your code
• Automate tedious tasks
• Let developers focus more on your business and not the plumbing
• Help you stay more compliant
• Reduce risk related to security

There are technical reasons to dive into metaprogramming, as with any other technique, but I think there is true value to be discovered in leveraging it to help you and your team become more productive and, at the end of the day, deliver more business-critical features that are easier to change and maintain over the years.