Program generators and the tools to make them

Program generation is among the most promising techniques in the effort to increase the automation of programming tasks. In this paper, we discuss the potential impact and research value of program generation, we give examples of our research in the area, and we outline a future work di-rection that we consider most interesting. Specifically, we first discuss why program generators have significant applied potential. At the same time we argue that, as a research topic, meta-programming tools (i.e., language tools for writ-ing program generators) may be of greater value. We then illustrate our views on generators and meta-programming tools with our latest work on the Meta-AspectJ meta-programming language and the GOTECH generator. Fi-nally, we examine the problem of statically determining the safety of a generator and present its intricacies. We limit our focus to one particular kind of guarantee for gener-ated code—ensuring that the generated program is free of compile-time errors. We believe that this research direction will see significant attention and will make a difference in the mainstream adoption of meta-programming technology