Honestly, that sounds pretty normal, or at least ok, to me. Auto-generation of code is one of my primary daily tools, and I think it's just right for whole categories of problems. I currently generate a good third of my compiled sources, and also generate a rudimentary typescript library out of my source code to be used by the my colleagues.

That being said, I usually work in Scala which provides language-based tools for that, so it definitely helps with avoiding the "dark magic" sentiment you may have had.

But why was it done that way ? It reduces boilerplate, copy-paste errors, code duplication, in ways sometimes not made possible by inheritance or composition.