Secure coding guidance may vary depending on whether code is hand-coded or automatically generated. Categories of code include:
- Tool-generated, tool-maintained - code that is specified and maintained in a higher level format, from which language-specific source code is generated. The source code is generated from this higher level description and then provided as input to the language compiler. The generated source code is never viewed or modified by the programmer.
- Tool-generated, hand-maintained - code that is specified and maintained in a higher level format, from which language-specific source code is generated. It is expected or anticipated, however, that at some point in the development cycle the tool will cease to be used and the generated source code will be visually inspected and/or manually modified and maintained.
- Hand-coded - code that has been manually written by a programmer using a text editor or interactive development environment in which the programmer maintains source code directly in the source code format provided to the compiler.
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