What Can a Wizard Do for You?

The world is divided—there are people who love wizards and people who hate them. Wizards are the kind of software tool where there are just no half-measures. I don't know how you feel about them, but if you could try to love them then they really can save you a lot of work.

Usually, wizards aren't smart or clever. They offer a wide range of choices and work by combining them through a thread of if-then-elses. Wizards aren't CASE tools; they just save you from writing some code manually. That's all—but it really is significant.

As for scriptlets, a wizard can automatically do the following:

Create a test page
Create a file with a given name
Assign the internal procedures names that follow a certain naming convention
Add the default code for handling standard events
Define some ambient features
Include the declaration, for properties and methods
Add a dummy implementation

Once you have generated the files, the wizard's job is finished and yours begins. Of course, you must put flesh on both the methods' and properties' body, as well as add the code that actually responds to the events. But you do now have a skeleton of clean code working perfectly to start with.