First of all, just because a tool or project uses a pattern, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea. Second, code generation as part of IDE or one-time setup is

First of all, just because a tool or project uses a pattern, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea. Second, code generation as part of IDE or one-time setup is something else. I need to clarify: when I say that "code generation" is an anti-pattern, I'm talking about the traditional, two-step process where you generate some code in one process, and then execute it in another. But Python works really well with a different type of "code generation". Someone once said that the only thing missing from Python is a macro language; but that is not true - Python has its own macro language, and it's called Python. Python is dynamically evaluated and executed, so there is no reason why we need two separate steps when generating code dynamically; in Python, the right way is not to dynamically construct the textual representation of code, but rather to dynamically construct runtime entities (classes, functions etc), and then use them straight away, in the same process. Unless you're dynamically building hundreds of such constructs (and if you do you have a bigger problem), any performance impact is negligible.