Metaprogramming vs plain Ruby or other languages

[Praful Gupta]

What does metaprogramming in Ruby involve? or what is the goal of this book? I am new to Ruby so don't know much about it but is metaprogramming something to apply after learning the basics of Ruby as a language like applying design pattens after you learn to write code?

Thanks

[David Newton]

Yes: meta-programming requires a strong foundation in the basics.

[Paolo Perrotta]

If you're steeped in Java, then think about Java's reflection features. Reflection is not something that you learn on your first few days through the language - but when you're a bit more advanced, then you'll definitely want to know about reflection, and you'll probably use it fairly often. Metaprogramming is similar, but more advanced. So you should know the basics of Ruby before you start looking into it.