A proposal for classifying reflective programming aimed at the development of autonomous systems

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a classification of reflection in levels, with an approach aimed to reach autonomous programming. Reflection is the ability of a program to reason, know and examine itself to act and modify its state at compilation or runtime. In this article, it is proposed four reflection levels according to the level of knowledge, modification ability, types of modifications, time to perform modifications and the reasoning level. Then, it is analyzed different programming languages and they are classified on those levels, based on the reflection capacity that they support. Each classification level is exemplified and finally we present a series of experiments where we compare them with equivalent versions of non-reflective programs. Out experiments showed that although reflective programs were more expensive, in terms of execution time and coding, they offer great flexibility and great potential for the design and development of programs. Therefore, it is the reflexivity the first step to achieve the development of autonomous systems which can simulate or pair biological systems.