The title of this post comes from an ad for one of those code generators that scans your database and creates an application with little to no work on the part of the developer. Sounds impressive, but what would impress more is the right 10,000 lines of code. Mark Twain said it best:

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
- Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888

The same goes for code. If you want a simple example, look at sorting algorithms. Bubble sort is the one that almost everyone comes across when first learning to sort data, and they quickly find that there are other ways to do it, some of which are more efficient in certain situations than others. The difference between the right sort routine and the wrong sort routine is the difference between a scalable program and one that has limitations.

Within limitations, I don't care if the code is 10,000 lines or 10 lines, I care that it does the job I want as efficiently and flexibly as possible. And it's that last part that causes the most consternation when using code generators. Creating a DataSet class in Visual Studio works fine for rough prototyping but I find it's almost as quick and easy to write the class from scratch so it does what I want it to do, not just come close the way a code generator does.

Just my .02