Likewise: I regard code generation as a red flag these days. The version skew issues when code generated off slightly different versions of messages are in play

Likewise: I regard code generation as a red flag these days. The version skew issues when code generated off slightly different versions of messages are in play can be really nasty. CORBA suffered from that issue big time in the late 90s. And if your generated code uses mutexes in a misguided attempt to be "thread safe", all bets are off...