Author: Manuel Lemos
Updated on: 2024-03-27
Posted on: 2024-03-27
Categories: PHP Tutorials, Tools, Artificial Intelligence
Parts of applications that follow well-known patterns are good candidates for using code generation tools to reduce the time developers need to produce the code of those application parts.
One example of code generation is the creation of ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) classes that store and retrieve application business objects into SQL-based relational databases.
Read this article to learn about recent developments in Google Gemini, an artificial intelligence tool, and the latest progress in modern code generation.
1. What is Code Generation
Code generation is an approach to producing code for a software project to accomplish a task that follows a specific pattern.
For instance, using the ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) approach to store and retrieve application data objects in an SQL-based relational database, you can use code generation tools to produce code that follows the ORM design pattern.
These tools usually can read code specifications to generate code that does what the developer wants with much less work and still have the quality of code written manually by a developer.
I have been using a code generation tool that I have been developing since 2022 called MetaStorage. Last time, I checked about 50% of the PHP Classes site code generated by this tool. This is an OpenSource tool that you may find on the MetaL site.
MetaL is a meta-language. This means that is higher language that is used to generate code in other languages. Currently MetaL can generate code in PHP and other languages.
2. Why Developers Should Use Code Generation Tools
One of the apparent advantages of code generation is that you can produce code to perform a specific task in much less time than if you would write it manually.
Another advantage is the reliability of the generated code. Since the generated code is produced by a tool that works in the same way, it does not contain mistakes caused by a human developer.
Keep in mind that code generation tools are usually limited to producing code for specific tasks. So human developers still have to write a lot of code manually to customize the projects to the needs of the customers who pay for them. So, human developers will always be needed.
You need to remember that the increase in the popularity of code generation tools will make using these tools a requirement for developers that will apply to new jobs regardless of whether they use artificial intelligence.
3. How Developers Can Use Google AI Studio to Generate Code Faster in a Modern Way in PHP or Other Language
Google AI Studio is a tool that any person can use to send requests expressed using natural language as if you are chatting with a human user.
This can be good for developers who would like to use artificial intelligence tools to generate code much faster than if they would write the code manually.
For this article, I made a test to show you how it can work to generate PHP code to do simple tasks.
In the images and video that you may see below you can see that in a few seconds, I asked Google AI Studio to generate code for two tasks:
3.1. Generate PHP code to generate a Fibonacci sequence
3.2. Generate PHP code for an ORM model class to map a database table named users
3.3. Video of Google AI tool to ask to generate these two types of PHP code
As you may see, it currently does not have the final code you can use, as it is in PHP applications. Still, this is very useful for those learning PHP or any other language supported by Google AI Studio.
You may also improve the text prompts I used to ask Google AI Studio to generate the code I mentioned above to be more specific or perform other tasks.
You may also want to learn how to use the Google Gemini API if you want to integrate with an application that uses code or another type of data generated by Google's artificial intelligence engine.
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