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When program source code is compiled, information about the structure of the program is normally lost as lower level code (typically assembly language code is emitted). If a system supports reflection, the structure is preserved as metadata with the emitted code.

Known platforms supporting reflection are:

• Lisp, and lisp variants (eg, Scheme)
• The Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
• .NET and the Common Language Runtime (CLR)
• Python
• Ruby

More generally, reflection is an activity in computation that reasons about its own computation. The programming paradigm driven by reflection is called reflective programmingIn computer science, reflective programming is a programming paradigm that encourages programming driven by the use of reflection at runtime. See also Programming paradigms External links Programming paradigms..