Why we chose CodeSmith
With the new version of CodeSmith being released I thought I would explain why it is that we chose to use CodeSmith over the many other code generators available.
When we decided to use a code generation tool to automate some of the more redundant sections of our project we took a look at all of the various code generation tools out there. One problem that I have always had with other code generators is that they force you to use their architecture. For every code generator that I looked at I did not like what I saw in the way of architecture, none of the generators I looked at accommodated for using custom business entities instead of using datasets or passing a reader around. CodeSmith was the only generator I found that really allowed me to completely customize how the code was generated. It took alot more effort to create the templates, but in the end it was the only generator that met all of our requirements, and so far has worked out perfectly.
-James