If you did down enough, you'll find some form of code generation in your environment of choice. If nothing else, compilers, but it's not limited to them.
The largest difference between that and copypasta is - generated code can be easily updated, by regenerating it.
It's also an implementation detail. I've read elsewhere in this thread that code generation is bad and language supported features are good. I'm not sure it's so clear cut. It shouldn't matter if the generated code is mostly invisible (when it's baked inside your binary by the compiler, due to language support), versus code that is generated in the source language and then compiled.
One thing that's always bad is mixing generated and non-generated code. You have all the disadvantages and little benefit.
Nothing is hidden away from you with code generation. There's no in-between steps from what you write to what you execute other than Go compilation.
I think it's the wrong mentality to require a whole new set of third-party tools to maintain a Go application. It then starts feeling like you're writing Javascript, and does anyone really want that?
what i mean is that you have complexity in your existing setup too... its just that you understand the ins and outs. and so the same applies to encore.