Code Generation in Action (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Developers using code generation are producing higher quality code faster than their hand-coding counterparts. And, they enjoy other advantages like maintainability, consistency and abstraction. Using the new CG methods they can make a change in one place, avoiding multiple synchronized changes you must make by hand.

Code Generation in Action shows you the techniques of building and using programs to write other programs. It shows how to avoid repetition and error to produce consistent, high quality code, and how to maintain it more easily. It demonstrates code generators for user interfaces, database access, remote procedure access, and much more.

Code Generation in Action is an A-to-Z guide covering building, buying, deploying and using code generators. If you are a software engineer-whether beginner or advanced-eager to become the "ideas person," the mover-and-shaker on your development team, you should learn CG techniques. This book will help you master them.

What's Inside:

• Code generation basics
• CG techniques and best practices
• Patterns of CG design
• How to deploy generators
• Many example generators

Includes generators for:

• Database access
• RPC
• Unit tests
• Documentation
• Business logic
• Data translation

Over his twenty years of development experience, Jack Herrington has shipped many software applications helped by code generation techniques. He runs the Code Generation Network.

About the Author

Jack Herrington is a software engineer who has shipped applications as diverse as scientific real-time applications and web applications for business. He is an expert in the use of code generation techniques from very simple code maintenance to code generators, which build entire tiers of functionality. He lives in Union City, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications; Revised edition (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930110979
• ISBN-13: 978-1930110977
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #214,897 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book with the right perspective and plenty of examples, October 30, 2003

By	Zen Micro User (CA United States) - See all my reviews

The writing is precise and clear with annotated examples everywhere. Positioning and justification of various techniques is very compelling.

The author's classification of various forms of active code generation clearly elucidates the potential of Code Generation. Usage of templates for code generation is an excellent suggestion. Explanations on various code snippets and regex macros are simply second to none. Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 10 are a must read for every developer.

Having implemented a large-scale database conversion from IDMS to DB2 (schema, data dictionary, run time and programs) using home grown automated generators in the past, I really enjoyed reading Chapter 10. I completely agree with the assertions made there and I am impressed by the way the author addresses common concerns. This chapter documents a practical approach to ease the burden of writing repetitive code for code heavy frameworks. Schema Oriented Code Generation is a practical approach to code generation. I also find various references in this Chapter and others extremely valuable.

The author has shown that with sufficient metadata about a system, a significant portion of the repetitive coding tasks relating to data access, user interface, test and documentation can be automated in a consistent manner using custom code generators.

It is refreshing to see code snippets in Ruby. The author's selection of Ruby becomes self evident after reading the various code snippets.

I find this to be a very compelling book and a must have for architects and seasoned developers!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a dedicated book on the subject, November 29, 2003

By	Foti Massimo (Vezia (Switzerland)) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I embraced code generators long time ago, so I was more than happy to finally found a dedicated book on the subject, since this is almost unexplored topic. The author clearly has a solid understanding of the topic, and manages to deliver a compelling book, with an excellent flow, where each chapter builds on previous concepts and ideas.
All the code snippets and regular expression samples are explained in a very clean, detailed way. I was pleased to see that many examples were non-trivial, covering concrete, real world, implementations. Herrington uses Ruby as an implementation language; you may like it or not, but what really matters here are the concepts, not the syntax and even if you don't know Ruby (like me), you will find the code pretty easy to follow.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction to meta-programming., July 26, 2004

By	Mike (CA) - See all my reviews

I had already written a few code generators when I saw this book and was hoping to find some insights into improving and extending what I had already done. The introduction gives a really nice overview of the designs patterns you can use. But this book is not about programming and the author assume you have the skills to implement the program you want to meta-program already.

The author illustrates his approach using a language I had never heard of before, Ruby, which is an OO scripting language that is quite compact and powerful and included is some basic tutorial info in the appendices to help you follow the examples. Overall a good book that I am glad I own and have read. I get the feeling I am going to go back to it many times.