Code generation has come a long way. From simple scaffolding tools, to complex UML-based modeling tools, the past 2 decades have seen a lot innovation. Then, the AI revolution happened, and everything changed.

We'll start this journey by looking at JHipster, a popular code generator that pionneered many code generation techniques over the past decade. We'll see how it evolved, as many companies and Open Source developers have worked together to improve it. We'll see some ideas which worked incredibly well, and some areas where no solution seemed possible until recently.

And then, generative AI is changing everything. We'll demo a few cool features from GitHub Copilot:

• generating trivial code instantly
• removing the need to look at the documentation of most APIs
• refactoring your code better than your IDE

While this will boost your productivity, and replace some code generation techniques, we'll also see its limits when creating complex applications, using recent tools, or following best practices specific to your company.

We'll finish by looking at the future: how AI will evolve in the future to better suit your needs, and how you can mix it with old-school code generation tools to get the best of both worlds.