Language support for adaptive object-models using metaclasses

Adaptive object models (AOM) are a sophisticated way of building object-oriented systems that let non-programmers customize the behavior of the system and that are most useful for businesses that are rapidly changing. Although systems based on an AOM are often much smaller than competitors, they can be difficult to build and to learn. We believe that the problems with AOM are due in part to a mismatch between their design and the languages that are used to build them. This paper describes how to avoid this mismatch by using implicit and explicit metaclasses.