What are Stencils?

People are quite familiar with the concept of Templates. In the programming world, templates can be used to generate code and they will usually have a specified syntax that is built into an engine or tool.

Plug-ins are another familiar term and usually means code external to an application or interface that can be fired up to enhance behavior or provide extra features as an add-on to the calling application. In CodeStencil, the equivalent to plug-ins are Code Nanites.

Stencils, while similar to templates is different in the sense that it is a combination of template and plug-in capabilities and does not need a template language to provide power for code generation.

CodeStencil has a powerful and intelligent string/keyword replacement architecture. That is why there is no template language built in.