Why (meta-)theories of automated software design are essential: A personal perspective

Program generators are tools that automatically construct customized programs in a particular domain. Generators mechanize implicit “theories” of how a domain expert would go about writing an efficient programing the core activities of a domain expert and automating them is analogous to creating and evaluating theories in physics and other natural sciences. Theories have a revered place in natural sciences; eventually theories will assume a comparable place in automated software design. The reason is simple economics: generators will remove the burden of difficult or mundane tasks from an engineer to a machine.