"Also, what do you guys think of software that generates code for the programmer?"

We use two kind of tools that generate code. One is Rational Rose, which can create C++ code out of class diagrams. You just have to fill in the body of the methods. It can also do the reverse, that is create class diagrams out of existing code.

This allows you to do round-trip engineering. It's quite nice idea as you can manipulate your code and view your system on a higher abstract level. However it's implementation is quite buggy it looks like.

The other form of code generation we use is to automatically install sanitychecks and dangling pointer checks in existing C++ code. This based on the class hierarchy and attributes of a class. This is all done in Perl (and was a lot of fun to implement!).

So code generation is quite useful, it allows you to manipulate programs on a higher level of abstraction. Code generation can be a bit of a pain for the people that have to maintain the code though. Because they want to make changes in the generated code they have to first understand how the code-generating code works.

Have fun, Frans.