Consider splitting into two language options for different use cases

[GinoCanessa]

I could imagine two variants of the codegen: one optimized for programmer-friendliness, the other optimized for performance. Take this class for example:

  public class DataRequirementSort : Element {
    [JsonProperty("direction")]
    public string Direction { get; set; }
    [JsonProperty("_direction")]
    public Element _Direction { get; set; }
    [JsonProperty("path")]
    public string Path { get; set; }
    [JsonProperty("_path")]
    public Element _Path { get; set; }
  }

For developer-friendliness, it might look like this:

public class DataRequirementSort : Element 
{
    [JsonProperty("direction")]
    public Element<string> Direction { get; set; }
    [JsonProperty("path")]
    public Element<string> Path { get; set; }
}

internal class Element<T>
{
    public Element<string> Id { get; set; }
    public Extension[] Extensions { get; set; }
    public T Value { get; set; }
}

For server-side performance, it might look more like this, given that extensions on primitive types are probably exceedingly rare:

internal class DataRequirementSort : Element
{
    private Dictionary<int, Element> _primitiveElements;

    [JsonProperty("direction")]
    public string Direction { get; set; }
    
    [JsonProperty("_direction")]
    public Element _Direction
    {
        get => GetPrimitiveElement(0);
        set => SetPrimitiveElement(0, value);
    }
    
    [JsonProperty("path")]
    public string Path { get; set; }
    
    [JsonProperty("_path")]
    public Element _Path
    {
        get => GetPrimitiveElement(0);
        set => SetPrimitiveElement(0, value);
    }

    private Element GetPrimitiveElement(int id)
    {
        Element value = null;
        _primitiveElements?.TryGetValue(id, out value);
        return value;
    }

    private void SetPrimitiveElement(int id, Element value)
    {
        (_primitiveElements ?? (_primitiveElements = new Dictionary<int, Element>()))[id] = value;
    }
}

Originally posted by @johnstairs in #2 (comment)