Technology

Reflection

The ability for a program to inspect, introspect, and modify its own structure (classes, methods, fields) at runtime.

Reflection is a powerful metaprogramming technique: it grants a running program the capability to examine and manipulate its own structure and behavior. In languages like Java and C#, this means you can dynamically inspect classes, invoke methods, and instantiate objects, all without compile-time knowledge. This dynamic capability is critical for building flexible, generic software libraries: consider its use in serialization, dependency injection frameworks, and Object-Relational Mappers (ORMs). Use it to bypass member accessibility rules or to implement runtime configuration based on metadata. Be aware: this power comes with performance overhead and potential security risks.