Your cow-orker should learn about data annotations.

In current version of Visual studio (2015), SQL Server 2014, this entity does indeed create an NVARCHAR(max) column:

public class TestEntity

{

public int ItemID { get; set; }

public string SomeStringValue { get; set; }

}

But this entity creates an nvarchar of only 100:

public class TestEntity

{

public int ItemID { get; set; }

[MaxLength(100)]

public string SomeStringValue { get; set; }

}

If you have to do code first, use data annotations for pity's sake!

(from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations)