{"id":280404,"date":"2025-06-08T00:26:52","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T00:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/code-generators-need-not-be-perfect\/"},"modified":"2025-06-08T00:26:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T00:26:52","slug":"code-generators-need-not-be-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=280404","title":{"rendered":"Code generators need not be perfect"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Le mieux est le mortel
ennemi\u00a0du bien. — Voltaire<\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

I’ve been working on expanding the v2tofhir code<\/a> that Audacious Inquiry<\/a> developed for one of our projects into a broader offering for public health that handles more than just Immunization messages.\u00a0 That’s not going back into the original open-source work, as it is not within the scope of that program. But it is going to become an application available to our customers.\u00a0Contact me if you want to learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One thing I relearned from my vibe coding session with Copilot<\/a> is that code generators don’t have to be perfect — although it certainly helps if they are.\u00a0 I already know from years of experience working with natural language processing is that heuristics can often get you most of the way there, and specialized exception handling can handle what the heuristic doesn’t.<\/p>\n

By putting these two ideas together I can successfully generate code for the 2700+ mapping rules in the current\u00a0HL7 V2 to FHIR<\/a> specification in just minutes.\u00a0 \u00a0This makes my code generator immediately effective to support the 75 or so segment mapping tables supported by that specification. With a few minutes, I can generate code to support every segment, and within a few hours more, can correct all of the missing bits.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The compiler is a perfect tool for detecting the exception cases. Like a canary in a coal mine, it is especially sensitive to danger. The code generator I’m still developing has been an excellent QA resource for the HL7 V2 to FHIR spec, as it enables me to verify content in the spec.\u00a0 Some errors in the generated output are actually caused by typos in the over 10000 lines of CSV data that is used to generate the HL7 standard.<\/p>\n

This is a tremendous lift for development, and as we figure out the patterns of errors, we can easily augment the code generator to fix them.\u00a0 While that’s being done, we still have code that we can tweak to perfection in much less time than it takes to generate it manually.\u00a0 It also reduces the amount of SME expertise needed to create the application.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The original open-source code took a more manual approach to automation (I was actually trying to figure out the process in using spreadsheets).\u00a0 It took about 3 months of work to handle about 20 segments.\u00a0 Easily half of that was putting together the surrounding infrastructure rather than parsing individual segments.\u00a0 The code generator took about a week to build.\u00a0 It gets very close to final code for 75 segments.\u00a0 These leave me about 40-50 errors to resolve, most of which are simple.\u00a0 I’m expecting another week or two will be needed to handle those issues in the generated code.\u00a0 This is easily an order of magnitude improvement. It can be repeated on new editions of the V2 to FHIR outputs much faster than fixing the code by hand, which also speeds up maintenance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Le mieux est le mortel ennemi\u00a0du bien. — Voltaire I’ve been working on expanding the v2tofhir code that Audacious Inquiry developed for one of our projects into a broader offering for public health that handles more than just Immunization messages.\u00a0 That’s not going back into the original open-source work, as it is not within the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":280405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109543],"tags":[11230,13514,1277],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-280404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-v2tofhir","tag-code","tag-generators","tag-perfect"],"yoast_head":"\nCode generators need not be perfect - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=280404\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Code generators need not be perfect - 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