* Code generators can speed up development * They give newbies a better idea of how the framework should be treated * They give the framework a more dependable layout * They still provide the escape hatch of not using them!
What would a dev have failed at simply because they built a code generator?
Creating an understandable API and making stuff easily extensible.
I often have the feeling these code generators try to hide bad design decisions, which resulted in a huge amount of boilerplate code, that wouldn't be needed if things were designed different.
And you can't even blame most frameworks for it. Ember has so much history that you can't simply throw every thing out, because "now animations or server-rendering is a PITA", so devs maneuver around it with code generators.
There are valid reasons to have them. But when I have to choose frameworks for a new project, code generators are definitely red flags for me.
I don't have much of a problem with this controller/route/model generation stuff, that you mentioned. I wouldn't use it, but I can see why people save a few minutes.
