This is what I’ve realized about using the latest iteration of EF4’s Code First in the EF Feature Pack CTP. (I will keep clarifying that code first and the new EF bits in the CTP are a preview, not for production and subject to change…)

When using code first where you simply create your domain classes and define a DbContext to manage them, Entity Framework quietly slips into the background and does all of it’s work – transforming LINQ queries into store queries, executing them on your behalf, reshaping the query results into your classes, change tracking and then handling persistence to the database.

Between code first’s behind-the-scenes automatic model creation and some of the small but impactful additions to the core API (e.g., DbSet and DbContext), when creating simple applications, you will no longer have to be focused on how to design an Entity Data Model or write Entity Framework code, because most of that will be taken care of you by these new features. Calling context.Customers.Add(myCustomer) doesn’t feel too much different than working with any other collection in .NET. Compare that to context.Customer.AddObject(myCustomer) which your .NET brain fights (just ask Chris Sells :)). Or context.Customers.Remove(myCustomer) which correctly implies that you are removing something from a collection vs. context.Customers.DeleteObject(myCustomer) which is unnatural, but worse, incorrectly suggests that you might be actually deleting this from the database.

While this does feel like an epiphany (oh, it’s just programming) and people like Scott Hanselman are calling code first “the magic EF unicorn”, keep in mind that as you start architecting more complex applications, you’ll still have a lot to understand about the behavior of EF and how to work with it. So, no, I’m not calling “stop the presses” on my book.

Code First will not be for everyone. Many people want and need to build their model by reverse engineering an existing database. Many people like using a modeling tool. That’s why EF has these options and that’s what drove the alignment of the names:

• Database First
• Model First
• Code First

Use what works for you…