Are You Drowning in Code? My Journey to Writing Less & Delivering MORE

For over three decades, from pioneering India’s largest public webmail (Rediffmail) to architecting a pre-AWS cloud (Cats Clouder), I've witnessed a persistent pattern across engineering teams: we're still writing too much code.

I don't mean essential business logic. I'm talking about the endless cycle of:

• Boilerplate code
• Repetitive glue code
• Structural scaffolding

Despite countless frameworks and low-code tools, many organizations essentially rebuild the foundation with every new "house" they construct. It's time we stopped.

💡 The Turning Point: From Repetition to Reusability

During my tenure at Synechron, working with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) alongside my colleague Sidharth Singh, we confronted this challenge head-on. We developed a BIAN-based code generation engine – a declarative, domain-driven accelerator for automating as much of back-end development as we could.

This wasn't just about automation; it was codified architectural intelligence.

Given a business capability model, it generated:

• Fully aligned back-end services
• Consistent APIs (think REST controllers)
• Clean architectural layers (Service, DAO)
• Domain models integrated with Kafka, MongoDB, and Spring Boot

The impact? A team that once spent 6-8 weeks scaffolding and QA-ing a single service could now achieve it in 4-5 days. This meant higher consistency, significantly lower risk, and dramatically faster on-boarding for new engineers.

Code generation became our mantra: Think once, apply everywhere.

📈 Engineering at Scale: It's Not About Writing Code Faster, but Writing Less of It

At scale, excessive code becomes a liability. Every line written today is a maintenance burden tomorrow. Multiply that by dozens of engineers, numerous services, and complex pipelines, and your innovation velocity grinds to a halt.

Imagine this:

• What if the first 60-70% of any backend service was generated from intent?
• What if engineers focused on optimization, observability, and resilience, rather than debating naming conventions?

This principle can revolutionize how enterprises build domain microservices, internal tools, and partner APIs, especially when combined with intelligent DevOps and AI-assisted workflows.

🌐 Beyond Finance: Universal Principles of Code Generation

While our initial generator was tailored for financial services (leveraging BIAN and ISO 20022), the core principles are domain-agnostic:

• Declarative capability modeling
• Pattern-based code emission
• Plug-and-play infrastructure hooks
• Extensible, business-first templates

Re-usability, compliance, security, and time-to-market all see dramatic improvements with a robust code generation strategy.

🤖 The AI Amplification: From Assistance to Architecture

Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4o show promise in code writing. However, the real leap lies in combining human intent, enterprise models, and machine pattern recognition to co-create system architectures.

AI isn't a replacement; it's an enabler, particularly for:

• Streamlining on-boarding & documentation
• Generating comprehensive test cases
• Automating CI/CD pipeline creation
• Refactoring legacy services

Paired with code generation, AI becomes a strategic multiplier for engineering productivity.

🔑 Final Thought: Write Less, Deliver More Value

We don't need more lines of code. We need smarter systems. The future belongs to systems that can intelligently generate themselves, enabling us to scale faster, smarter, and leaner.

As someone who's led engineering transformations and mentored innovators over three decades, I'm thrilled by this shift. Let's stop the cycle of "too much code" and start building truly intelligent platforms.

What are your thoughts on the role of code generation and AI as a strategy to reduce developer written code in modern software development? Let's discuss in the comments! 👇

Keywords:

Code Generation, Software Development, Engineering Productivity, Boilerplate Code, Glue Code, Microservices, API Development, System Architecture, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), BIAN, ISO 20022, Kafka, MongoDB, Spring Boot, DevOps, AI in Software Development, LLMs, Platform Engineering, Technical Debt Reduction, Scalability, Software Innovation, Developer Velocity, Engineering Leadership.

Hashtags:

#CodeGeneration #SoftwareDevelopment #EngineeringExcellence #DeveloperProductivity #AIinSoftware #Microservices #APIDesign #PlatformEngineering #DevOps #TechLeadership #Innovation #DigitalTransformation #BIAN #ScalableArchitecture #FutureOfCoding #SpringBoot #Java #EnterpriseSoftware