Generic software components

When building software, most projects reduce development time by making integrating re-usable components. When building a re-usable component, there are two popular strategies for configuring a generic component to the application - you could either have a configuration file, as most .NET applications do, or you could have all configuration parameters sent in via code through setting properties and calling constructors or other methods.

The essence of building a generic component is that you should think of the component as a breadboard - somebody somewhere would want to do something that you did not intent and the ability to adapt the component to the scenario is what makes a successful component.