'AI' and Csla

[Chicagoan2016]

With all the buzz around AI tools for programming (productivity), I am curious about what fellow Csla developers use.
Thanks

[rockfordlhotka]

I mostly use Copilot as it is integrated with VS and vscode, and I have a license through work.

I have also used Cursor quite a bit, and for "vibe coding" I think it is actually better, though copilot agent mode in vscode is catchingi up rapidly (imo).

I also tried (just once so far) the GitHub feature where you can assign an Issue to Copilot and it'll try to fix the GH issue. That didn't work well at all for me, but I suspect it is because the Issue description was too cryptic, and perhaps the bug to be fixed was too complex (CSLA is not trivial after all!).

I have used the GH ability to assign Copilot as a PR reviewer. That can be helpful in some cases.

Outside of coding, I've spent countless hours over the past few days using ollama and OllamaSharp to run and interact with local LLM models (because that's free - no cloud tokens consumed). It has been an interesting learning experience, because we're still early enough in the wave that the docs are largely out of date and/or wrong, but there's enough tooling and GH repos that a stubborn person can get things working.

It turns out that some of the smaller LLM models run fairly well on a machine with 32gb RAM and GPU. The bigger ones (bigger than 8 or 12 I've found) can barely run on my desktop, which has 64gb RAM and a gaming GPU. I think the limitation is the GPU only having 12 or 16gb of memory, so the models can't fit into the GPU, forcing them to run in the CPU instead.

In any case, the machines generate heat like when I'm playing a high end game 🥵

[Bowman74]

@rockfordlhotka,
Agreed. I'm not at all sure we could provide sufficient utility where someone would want to spend the effort to get a Docker container working and they would have to have some good hardware specs to make it performant for daily use. The only reason I can see really to do it is if there were some ulterior motive like wanting to do a talk on it.

[Chicagoan2016]

@Bowman74 This is one of my favorite topics (as well as a pet peeve 😊).
The way I usually design my objects (with Csla) is to follow the 'behavior' design approach which in my case means the objects correspond to the UI. The 'ORM' is done in stored procs and I use ADO.NET (never got into entity framework etc. out of laziness).
It takes me a lot of typing to generate DAL layer including DTOs and various interfaces to implement my objects and Dal (I follow the Project tracker pattern).
Of course the Dal layers that I write are error prone.
I feel like a lot of the code that I write could be automated. I was writing a few Read-only objects (Csla based) for Reporting on Friday and I almost thought of just getting a dataset instead, directly in the UI layer 😂

[Bowman74]

@Chicagoan2016
I think you can get most of what you want with the current agents that exist today. Here is an example using a brand new project with CSLA referenced in Visual Studio using CoPilot in Agent mode with Claude Sonnet 4 as the model.

Here is my prompt:

Create a new clsa businessbase class called Invoice. It should have the following properties: InvoiceId (int) InvoiceDate (datetime), CustomerId (int), OrderId (int). There should be local dataportal methods to create, save and fetch based on InvoiceId.

Here is the process it went through, it is pretty expressive about what it is doing:

I'll help you create a new CSLA BusinessBase class called Invoice with the specified properties and data portal methods. Let me first explore the workspace to understand the project structure and existing CSLA implementation.

Let me get more context about the project structure and see if there are any existing CSLA classes or references.

Great! I can see that the project already has the CSLA package reference (version 9.1.0). Now let me check the existing Class1.cs file to understand the current structure.

Now I'll create the Invoice class as a CSLA BusinessBase with the requested properties and data portal methods. I'll create a new file for this class.

Now let me check for any compilation errors to ensure the code is correct.

I need to fix the DataPortal usage. Let me update the Invoice class to use the correct CSLA 9.x syntax.

Good! Now let me run a full build to make sure everything compiles correctly.

Perfect! I've successfully created a new CSLA BusinessBase class called Invoice with the following features:
Created Invoice Class with:
Properties:
• InvoiceId (int) - Read-only property that gets set during data operations
• InvoiceDate (DateTime) - Read-write property for the invoice date
• CustomerId (int) - Read-write property for the customer ID
• OrderId (int) - Read-write property for the order ID
Factory Methods:
• CreateAsync() - Creates a new Invoice instance
• FetchAsync(invoiceId) - Fetches an existing Invoice by ID
Data Portal Methods:
• Create - Initializes a new Invoice with default values
• Fetch - Retrieves an Invoice by ID (currently simulated)
• Insert - Saves a new Invoice to storage (currently simulated)
• Update - Updates an existing Invoice in storage (currently simulated)
Business Rules:
• Required validation for InvoiceDate, CustomerId, and OrderId properties
The class follows CSLA 9.x conventions with proper dependency injection for the DataPortal. The data operations are currently simulated (they don't connect to a real database), but they provide the structure you need to implement actual data access later.
To use this class, you would typically inject IDataPortal into your consuming classes and call the factory methods like:

var newInvoice = await Invoice.CreateAsync(dataPortal);
var existingInvoice = await Invoice.FetchAsync(dataPortal, 123);

This is the class it generated:

using Csla;

namespace eraseme123
{
    [Serializable]
    public class Invoice : BusinessBase<Invoice>
    {
        #region Properties

        public static readonly PropertyInfo<int> InvoiceIdProperty = RegisterProperty<int>(nameof(InvoiceId));
        public int InvoiceId
        {
            get => GetProperty(InvoiceIdProperty);
            private set => SetProperty(InvoiceIdProperty, value);
        }

        public static readonly PropertyInfo<DateTime> InvoiceDateProperty = RegisterProperty<DateTime>(nameof(InvoiceDate));
        public DateTime InvoiceDate
        {
            get => GetProperty(InvoiceDateProperty);
            set => SetProperty(InvoiceDateProperty, value);
        }

        public static readonly PropertyInfo<int> CustomerIdProperty = RegisterProperty<int>(nameof(CustomerId));
        public int CustomerId
        {
            get => GetProperty(CustomerIdProperty);
            set => SetProperty(CustomerIdProperty, value);
        }

        public static readonly PropertyInfo<int> OrderIdProperty = RegisterProperty<int>(nameof(OrderId));
        public int OrderId
        {
            get => GetProperty(OrderIdProperty);
            set => SetProperty(OrderIdProperty, value);
        }

        #endregion

        #region Factory Methods

        public static async Task<Invoice> CreateAsync(IDataPortal<Invoice> dataPortal)
        {
            return await dataPortal.CreateAsync();
        }

        public static async Task<Invoice> FetchAsync(IDataPortal<Invoice> dataPortal, int invoiceId)
        {
            return await dataPortal.FetchAsync(invoiceId);
        }

        #endregion

        #region Data Portal Methods

        [Create]
        private void Create()
        {
            // Set default values for new invoice
            InvoiceDate = DateTime.Today;
            LoadProperty(InvoiceIdProperty, 0);
            BusinessRules.CheckRules();
        }

        [Fetch]
        private void Fetch(int invoiceId)
        {
            // In a real application, this would fetch data from a database
            // For demonstration purposes, we'll simulate loading data
            LoadProperty(InvoiceIdProperty, invoiceId);
            LoadProperty(InvoiceDateProperty, DateTime.Today.AddDays(-30));
            LoadProperty(CustomerIdProperty, 1001);
            LoadProperty(OrderIdProperty, 2001);
        }

        [Insert]
        private void Insert()
        {
            // In a real application, this would insert the invoice into a database
            // For demonstration purposes, we'll simulate an insert operation
            
            // Simulate generating a new ID
            LoadProperty(InvoiceIdProperty, new Random().Next(1000, 9999));
            
            // Mark the object as old (saved)
            MarkOld();
        }

        [Update]
        private void Update()
        {
            // In a real application, this would update the invoice in a database
            // For demonstration purposes, we'll just mark it as old (saved)
            MarkOld();
        }

        #endregion

        #region Business Rules

        protected override void AddBusinessRules()
        {
            base.AddBusinessRules();
            
            // Add business rules
            BusinessRules.AddRule(new Csla.Rules.CommonRules.Required(InvoiceDateProperty));
            BusinessRules.AddRule(new Csla.Rules.CommonRules.Required(CustomerIdProperty));
            BusinessRules.AddRule(new Csla.Rules.CommonRules.Required(OrderIdProperty));
        }

        #endregion
    }
}

That's pretty accurate on writing code and I didn't have to write a lot to get that class. Even more importantly, look at the fact it looked for similar classes in the project before creating that one. That is to say, if you already have classes in the project that follow the exact pattern you want to use, it will use them as a template to follow. So some of the things I'd do differently like the DataPortal factory methods and namespace syntax is would "correct" based on my usage in the project.

I don't think anyone is saying that using AI and CSLA isn't useful. It clearly is. I think it is more that the existing agents are pretty good at doing it already. Is there something else you expected it to do that I'm not understanding in your problem?

[Chicagoan2016]

Thanks @Bowman74 .
I would like to add you on linkedin if that's okay?

[Bowman74]

@Chicagoan2016 Absolutely. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevineford/