Generative Programming: Modern Techniques to Automate Repetitive Programming Tasks

Even when developers have recurring computer-readable metadata to process and a clear idea of how code should be structured, they can still find themselves in need of a technique to automatically generate the code to avoid the drudge work of repeatedly writing and tweaking it. Generative programming is a technique that addresses this problem. Using generative programming techniques, you can solve software engineering problems in families, rather than individually, saving time and coding effort. This article describes these techniques, and builds a sample template-driven code generator. The article also lists existing utilities that have been built with generative programming techniques, as well as actual code generators.

Chris Sells

<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/magazine/2e8b0518-099f-40d0-b390-007e5d1d914b">MSDN Magazine December 2001