Punchcards. COBOL. Visual Basic. The Internet. Each step forward makes the previous seem obsolete and changes the playing field forever. Whilst the science of software development is constantly evolving, roughly once each decade there a singularly brilliant innovation that sweeps the industry forward. What will be the next evolutionary leap forward in software development ?

Code generation tools, of course, are increasingly becoming an indispensable part of the web developers toolbox. Automating parts of the development cycle can have massive benefits, particularly for applications being developed for the internet.

- Code generation tools save developers time by avoiding cutting code for boring, repetitive tasks.
- By taking a consistent, repeatable approach to solving the same problem, human error (and therefore bug counts) can be reduced.

The problem with most code generation tools however, is that they always produce the same answer every time, no matter what the specifics of your application are. Unfortunately, software problems often can't be solved the same way in every situation.

A few examples:

- Applications with very high transaction rates and large numbers of users, such as a share trading website will generally require a very lightweight user interface and as few postbacks as possible. Technologies such as DHTML and AJAX can greatly improve the scalability and user responsiveness of such an application.

- A customer database used by a call centre may require a spreadsheet style app that can interactively scroll and sort through thousands of records within the second or two that a caller is on the phone. In this situation perhaps a front end that utilises client side capabilities such as a Windows SmartClient or Macromedia Flash DataGrid will be best suited.

- Websites which have long running tasks in the pipeline, such as communication with a mainframe or verification of available seating for an airline ticketing program, may benefit from the asynchronous processing of MSMQ.

CrunchyCode goes one step further beyond ordinary code generation tools, by developing entire applications for you, front end, middle tier and stored procedures included. Multiple different working solutions (with full source) are created simultanously so you can evaluate the different approaches and choose the one that best fits your needs.

This approach has a number of benefits:
- Your dev team is exposed to alternative ways of solving a particular problem. Often a solution will be developed that you hadn't even thought of.
- You gain valuable insight into cutting edge technologies that you perhaps aren't familiar with, such as Macromedia Flash, AJAX or Dynamic HTML.
- If you so choose, you can involve users and business analysts prior early in the development cycle for feedback on what sort of capabilities best suit their needs.
- You can avoid some of the boring, repetitive parts of the development cycle and concentrate on those areas that most add value.

CrunchyCode will benefit any ASP.NET / SQL Server developer, guaranteed !