This article has touched on metaprogramming in a few of its more common guises. I hope I have persuaded you that metaprogramming is both ubiquitous and useful, and certainly that it shouldn't be left to a select few.

At one time, the aim of computer science seemed to be to come up with a language whose concepts were pitched at such a high level that software development would be simple. Simple enough that people could program machines as easily as they could, say, send a text message. Compilers would be intelligent and forgiving enough to translate wishes to machine code.

This aim is far from being realised. We do have higher-level languages but their grammars remain decidedly mechanical. Programs written in low-level languages still perform the bulk of processing. Perhaps a more realistic aim is for a framework where languages and programs are compatible, able to communicate with humans and amongst themselves, on a single device or across a network.

In such a framework, metaprogramming is your friend.