In an orthogonally persistent programming system, data is treated in a manner independent of its persistence. This gives simpler semantics, allows the programmer to ignore details of long-term data storage and enables type checking protection mechanisms to operate over the entire lifetime of the data. The ultimate goal of persistent programming language research is to reduce the costs of producing software. The work presented in this thesis seeks to improve programmer productivity in the following ways: . by reducing the amount of code that has to be written to construct an application; . by increasing the reliability of the code written; and . by improving the programmer's understanding of the persistent environment in which applications are constructed. Two programming techniques that may be used to pursue these goals in a persistent environment are type-safe linguistic reflection and hyper-programming. The first provides a mechanism by which the programmer can write generators that,...

In an orthogonally persistent programming system the longevity of data is independent of its other attributes. The advantages of persistence may be seen primarily in the areas of data modelling and protection resulting from simpler semantics and reduced complexity. These have been verified by the first implementations of persistent languages, typically consisting of a persistent store, a run-time system and a compiler that produces programs that may access and manipulate the persistent environment. This thesis demonstrates that persistence can deliver many further benefits to the programming process when applied to software construction and execution. To support the thesis, a persistent environment has been extended with all the components necessary to support program construction and execution entirely within the persistent environment. This is the first known example of a strongly-typed integrated persistent programming environment. The keystone of this work is the construction of ...