Code Generation

In the 1990s Dr. Emmelmann developed the BEG - portable native code generator tool for automatic retargetable code generation, while at GMD Karlsruhe and the university of Karlsruhe. After 1995 for some years H.E.I. provided a version of BEG to its customers, which is now discontinued. H.E.I., however, still provides consulting in the field of code generation.

An (automatic) code generator is a computer program that automatically writes or translates computer programs. There are code generators for native machine code of a CPU and for source code. Native code generators are typlically used inside compilers. Source code generators on the other hand are used to accelerate the programming job by automizing it. Typically source code generators are very beneficial when developing a variety of similar programs, e.g. a family of applications that share a common application domain.

The discontinued BEG tool used source code generation to build (a family) compilers for various different target architectures (e.g. Pentium, IA-64, ARM, SPARC) and all these compilers included native code generators.

H.E.I. also uses source code generation for restauration of legacy code and of course for generation of web pages as part of web applications.