I have some question about templates and linker

I had a question while studying a template

1.Templates do not instantiate code if they have not been used yet, so the compiler will not implement the template in the obj file and the linker will not find the corresponding contents in the obj file.

2. Compilation takes longer because most of the code is generated during compilation.

I think these two words don't work together So my conclusion is that linking happens before the template is instantiated at compile time. What do you think?