Mathew Nolton Blog

Software dementia unleashed...

Code Generation

It's official. I am once again excited about code generation. In the past (starting in year 2000), I wrote a product called Template{X}. It used the ASP metaphor to allow you to write ASP like code. But instead of rendering html to a browser, it rendered code to your development environment. http://www.cybral.com/solutions/templatex.htm.

Frankly after more than a year or so of making little money on it, I stopped. Now that I have regrouped and been looking at the CodeDom namespace. I am once again excited. In the past, I had to create the meta layers. I still think some of this is needed but it was always a problem decompiling binary code. With COM/DCOM you could decompile typelibraries and get the interface definitions. You could also interrogate COM objects looking for the IDispatch interface. Once you had this you could get methods/properties by callign GetIdofNames. This enabled you to also achieve intellisense in your code editors. However, with the meta information provided by .Net, life seems so much easier.

My technical life should be more interesting with a fun project to help occupy my mind and time (what little i have anyway ;)).

Posted: Feb 23 2004, 11:48 AM by MatiasN | with 4 comment(s)
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Comments

Sean Schade said:

Nice presentation last night at the .NET User's Group meeting!

I think code generation at the precompilation level would be extremely useful. Aspects could bring a whole new aspect to .NET. Pun intended!

Sean
# February 24, 2004 10:51 AM

Mathew Nolton said:

Thanks. It was fun getting in front of a crowd again.

Per Code-Gen'ing
I agree interception is needed and an implementation via injection of code (code generation) is the most elegant solution at this time.

# February 24, 2004 11:46 AM

Udi Dahan - The Software Simplist said:

CodeSmith.

AOP is should NOT be tied to code-gen. AOP should be understood architecturally first, code after.

The kind of mess that can be made in AOP would be like taking spaghetti to the 4th dimension =)
# February 24, 2004 6:09 PM

Mathew Nolton said:

Udi. Sean and I are are discussing a specific implementation for a specific problem leftover from our discussion at the .Net user group meeting in Atlanta. It's not meant as a blanket statement about AOP :)

# February 24, 2004 8:36 PM
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