Runtime Support for Self-Evolving Software

Software development and deployment is based on a well established two stage model: program development and program execution. Since the beginning of software development, meta-programming has proven to be useful in several applications. Even though interpreted languages have successfully exploited the ability of generating programs, meta-programming is still far from being main stream. The two stage model is largely due to the computing metaphors adopted for defining programs, and deeply entrenched within the whole software management infrastructure. In this paper we explore how a runtime, multi-staged, self-contained, meta-programming system based on the notion of partial application can provide a suitable support for programs capable of evolve along time. To make the discussion more concrete we discuss two scenarios where the suggested infrastructure is used: software installation and robot control by means of programs embedding knowledge into thier code rather than into data structures.