Code Generation in Microsoft .NET :

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for code generation folks
Review: This is a great book. Surely not the kind of book that you can read to relax: there are always several threads to follow, and if you skip a page, then you sort of feel that you're going to miss something, maybe a little useful practical tip, or maybe a smart design approach with lots of interesting implications. So it might take a fairly long time to read it, but it's well invested. Not only if you're on .NET: most, if not all, code generation concepts can be applied to other platforms and languages. So if you are interested in code generation this book is a must-read.

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating Book..
Review: This is a very frustrating book for a couple of reasons. First contrary to what the book and some of the previous reviewers have said, there is no C# support for this book.

I quote the back of the book, "In addition to the text, the tools in the book (downloadable in both VB.net and C#)..." This is untrue. While there are some code examples in C# in the download, almost everything is in VB.net. This includes the code generation harness, which to me is the whole reason to buy the book. If you don't believe me download the code before you buy the book. There is a note in the read me that says as much.

While this might be of small significance to all you VB types, I came to MS from the Java/C world and don't know VB.

The second frustrating thing about the book is that it is about how to deploy a code generator not how to write one. There is a lot of discussion about metadata extraction, how to write good handcrafted code, etc. But the only discussion about how the code generation works is way out in Appendix C: Details of the Code Generation Harness.

Now if this is supposed to be a beginning book on code generation, shouldn't it talk about the code generator and how it works in the actual book??

I wish that someone would have told me these things before I bought it. I think down the road this may be a useful book once can get my hands around the generator. It has chapters on things metadata extraction and interface generation that look very interesting. For that reason I am giving it a 3.