Ask HN: How often do you use code generators in your software projects?
I'm asking this as it seems like a really common pattern in projects that I worked on.
It usually goes like this: system architecture gets complex and elaborate enough that new features/modules require developers to manually copy and paste 5-10 files from the similar feature as a starting point. Most of that code is not even related to task you're trying to solve, just a general boilerplate to fit into existing architecture.
So a custom code generator gets written to ease those efforts.
To me it seems like inevitably every bigger project comes to this phase and we end up writing a generator for it. In fact, I'm working on one right now.
Wondering what are the other people's experiences with this.
It usually goes like this: system architecture gets complex and elaborate enough that new features/modules require developers to manually copy and paste 5-10 files from the similar feature as a starting point. Most of that code is not even related to task you're trying to solve, just a general boilerplate to fit into existing architecture.
So a custom code generator gets written to ease those efforts.
To me it seems like inevitably every bigger project comes to this phase and we end up writing a generator for it. In fact, I'm working on one right now.
Wondering what are the other people's experiences with this.