I’m working on a tool that will generate the source code for an interface and a couple classes implementing that interface. My output isn’t particularly complicated, so it’s not going to be hard to make the output conform to our normal code formatting standards.
But this got me thinking: how human-readable does auto-generated code need to be? When should extra effort be expended to make sure the generated code is easily read and understood by a human?
In my case, the classes I’m generating are essentially just containers for some data related to another part of the build with methods to get the data. No one should ever need to look at the code for the classes themselves, they just need to call the various getters the classes provide. So, it’s probably not too important if the code is ‘clean’, well formatted and easily read by a human.
However, what happens if you’re generating code that has more than a small amount of simple logic in it?
I think it’s just as important for generated code to be readable and follow normal coding styles. At some point, someone is either going to need to debug the code or otherwise see what is happening ‘behind the scenes’.