In software engineering we study qualities of software systems in-the-large and how to improve them.
Automated tools (meta programs) are used to deal with the overwhelming complexity of their source code.
Like a medical doctor's instruments, such tools are equally useful in research as in engineering practice.

However, most meta programs require significant investment. The reasons are that they are necessarily tailored to
a specific programming language, requiring intimate knowledge about its syntax and semantics. SEN1 (a.k.a. SWAT)
has been, is and will be involved in both fundamental research behind the construction of such meta programs, as
well as in the transfer of knowledge about and tools for meta programming to industry.
A new "domain specific" programming language - Rascal - is uniquely designed to integrate primitives from both
the software analysis and the software transformation domains.
We are designing it for a wide audience of programming experts. In this presentation we motivate the design of
Rascal and demonstrate a few textbook examples of meta programs.