Are code generators bad?

Question

I use MyGeneration along with nHibernate to create the basic POCO objects and XML mapping files. I have heard some people say they think code generators are not a good idea. Wha

Answer 1

The biggest problem I've had with code generators is during maintenance. If you modify the generated code and then make a change to your schema or template and try to regenerate you can have problems.

One problem is if the tool doesn't allow you to protect changes you've made to the modified code then your changes will be overwritten.

Another problem I've seen, particularly with code generators in RSA for web services, if you change the generated code too much the generator will complain that there is a mismatch and refuse to regenerate the code. This can happen for something as simple as changing the type of a variable. Then you are stuck generating the code to a different project and merging the results back into your original code.