Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: Meta-Programming Techniques for Java

Ever been envious of how easily Python, Ruby and even JavaScript can “meta-program”? It’s like magic: seemingly simple or innocuous code takes over big responsibilities; new methods and behaviors appear out of thin air. Your code, your primary code, stays simple and easy to follow. Now, we know you can do that for scripting languages, but what do we do about Java? With the proper component-focused context, it is possible to emulate many of those same capabilities, by applying a simple set of code transformations at runtime.

In this session you’ll learn about meta-programming and how it can apply to traditional Java. You’ll learn about the techniques needed to transform classes at runtime, adding new behaviors and addressing cross-cutting concerns. The presentation will discuss a new framework for this specific purpose, but also draw examples from the Apache Tapestry web framework, which itself is rich in meta-programming constructs.


About Howard Lewis Ship

Howard Lewis Ship

Howard Lewis Ship is the creator and lead developer for the Apache Tapestry project, and is a noted expert on Java framework design and developer productivity. He has over twenty years of full-time software development under his belt, with over ten years of Java. He cut his teeth writing customer support software for Stratus Computer, but eventually traded PL/1 for Objective-C and NeXTSTEP before settling into Java.

Howard is respected in the Java community as an expert on web application development, dependency injection, Java meta-programming, and developer productivity. He is a frequent speaker at JavaOne, NoFluffJustStuff, ApacheCon and other conferences, and the author of "Tapestry in Action" for Manning (covering Tapestry 3.0). Lately, he's been dipping his toes into alternate languages, including Clojure.

Howard is an independent consultant, offering Tapestry training, mentoring and project work as well as training in Clojure. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Suzanne, and his son, Jacob.

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