Dave Burke - Freelance .NET Developer specializing in Online Communities

A freelance .NET Developer

Funny how coding skillsets and interests evolve

I was at DevDays Boston last Tuesday, and on Wednesday loaded up the Smart Client track IssueVision solution in VS.NET.  Very juicy.  Lots of concepts to proceed with.  While I've been .Net-focused for going on 3 years, I've done ASP.NET, Web Services, and console app programming only.  So the world of Smart Client and Windows Forms is still new.

Regarding the evolution of skillsets and interests topic, I loaded IssueVision to get started with Smart Client development, but then quickly realized that I needed to go further with my implementation of business objects to handle fully disconnected data processes.  Focusing on business objects caused me to realize that I'm nuts to write them without employing Code Generation.  So I take a serious look at CodeSmith and see how it can benefit my development far beyond the generation of business objects. 

So with CodeSmith I'm very enthusiastic about code generation, am excited about more sophisticated use of business objects in disconnected environments, and finally back to where I began the trip: getting started with smart client apps.

[OT] I caught The Sopranos for the first time this season and missed a lot of last season's shows.  Last night's show was so much fun (with the exception of the lawn management guy...  Poor fellow!)

Posted: Mar 22 2004, 09:27 AM by daveburke | with 2 comment(s)
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Scott Munro said:

Hi Dave,

I am in the process of building a code generator, (NGenerate), and am focusing on generating .Net code.

I am using a hybrid of raw string manipulation and CodeDom in my 'templating language' as opposed to CodeSmith's xml based language. This means that templates are written using .Net code such as VB.Net or C#.

I am supplying object oriented building blocks such as class and method definitions and intellisense is also available.

I was wondering how comfortable you found the xml style and if you can see any advantages with the technique I am describing?

I would also be interested to know how much background you had with xml technologies such as XSLT prior to using CodeSmith.
# March 22, 2004 10:34 AM

Dave Burke said:

Scott,

I read about nGenerate. Best regards with that!

To me, CodeSmith IS using .Net languages in writing templates, which is why it has come so naturally for me.

I've used XML for years, used XSLT but never written from scratch for an application. So as you are suggesting, my comfort level with a product like CodeSmith with a .NET scripting approach to templates would be greater than a more XML-driven generator.
# March 22, 2004 11:31 AM
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