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0 pointssimion3144y ago0 comments

An IDE or other tools will generate correct boilerplate code. Seems a gripe from someone that prefers hidden magical code that setups code behind their back.

The evil is that someone trained an AI on random text , not even with some AST, so you have garbage in so no surprise you get garbage out.

A true AI would understand that "the dev wants trough find all lines of text in a file that have this property", the AI just does "this code string is similar to this other code string using this `black box metric`"

0 comments

andix4y ago

The problem with boilerplate code is, that it is mostly generated once (by the ide) and then slightly modified. More like a template. In the end you get a lot of meaningless code (the generated code), with some meaningful parts inside. But you can’t see anymore what was generated and what was added manually without deep analysis of the commit log.

It is much better to generate code on the fly during build, so it doesn’t even go to source control and people can’t modify it.

simion314OP4y ago

Code generated by magic is worse in my experience, with non-magic code you put a breakpoint where the project starts and you can run step trough it line by line, function by function and it makes sense. What I hate are magic frameworks that are terrible at reporting the issues, say in angular1 you have some bindings and soemtimes they don't trigger , you can't debug the magic strings of the templates in the debugger to see what is happening (it could be a typo but because is all Google dev magic it won't warn you about it).

I hope we are talking about same things, like you dislike creating classes and function explicitly and prefer adding a comment or some templating system that generates a ton of obscure code behind the scenes.

andix4y ago

Generated code doesn't have to be magical. The generated code should off course be reviewed by a person from time to time. It must be debuggable and readable/understandable too. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense.

A good example for generated code are typed clients for an OpenAPI interface. Instead of writing a REST client on your own based on a spec, you generate it. And if something isn't right in the first place, don't edit the generated code, fix/configure the generator instead!

Or database models. Either generate the database from the models or the models from the database.

1 more reply

fendy30024y ago

Not without trade-off though, I've been on both spectrum. Template generated code allows you to modify things if you know how, while generation on the flies will need a bunch of options, hooks, and worse string-based evaluation call to make it modifiable.

So it's better for code with little to no modification, while boilerplate / template are better for things that will be modified.

marcosdumay4y ago

> Template generated code allows you to modify things if you know how

That's exactly the problem. and because templates allow you to modify the code, the template creators do no work on generalizing it so it covers all the use cases. So, on practice, templates usually require that you modify it.

And now you have a huge codebase, mostly with the default text, but with some changes at random, and one of those changes is breaking it. Good luck finding it.

lmilcin4y ago

Or you can use Lisp, call your boilerplate generator a macro and get rid of any boilerplate and never again have any problems with modifying any duplicate pieces of code.

Sigh... every time I see people generating any code (say through external tool or through IDE) I am always thinking how this could be a simple macro in any Lisp language.

andix4y ago

Templates are a fancy way of copy&paste programming.

So if you need a lot of template code, then your design or your framework is not well suited for the task.

In software development the goal is usually to move commonly used functions or patterns into a library or a framework, instead of copy&pasting them with slight modifications.

jjav4y ago

Between explicit boilerplate vs. hidden magic, give me the boilerplate every time. At least then it is obvious (maybe painfully obvious) what code is executing. Hidden magic is the worst since code should be optimized for reading and diagnosing, not for write-time which only happens once.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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andix4y ago

It is much better to generate code on the fly during build, so it doesn’t even go to source control and people can’t modify it.

simion314OP4y ago

andix4y ago

Or database models. Either generate the database from the models or the models from the database.

1 more reply

fendy30024y ago

So it's better for code with little to no modification, while boilerplate / template are better for things that will be modified.

marcosdumay4y ago

> Template generated code allows you to modify things if you know how

And now you have a huge codebase, mostly with the default text, but with some changes at random, and one of those changes is breaking it. Good luck finding it.

lmilcin4y ago

Or you can use Lisp, call your boilerplate generator a macro and get rid of any boilerplate and never again have any problems with modifying any duplicate pieces of code.

Sigh... every time I see people generating any code (say through external tool or through IDE) I am always thinking how this could be a simple macro in any Lisp language.

andix4y ago

Templates are a fancy way of copy&paste programming.

So if you need a lot of template code, then your design or your framework is not well suited for the task.

In software development the goal is usually to move commonly used functions or patterns into a library or a framework, instead of copy&pasting them with slight modifications.

jjav4y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse