The term component is a very much overloaded term in modern software engineering. The most generic definition is basically a piece of software that is somehow reusable or somehow deployable. So my fellow nairalanders what would you consider to be a component in your programming language of choice.

harryobas: The term component is a very much overloaded term in modern software engineering. The most generic definition is basically a piece of software that is somehow reusable or somehow deployable. So my fellow nairalanders what would you consider to be a component in your programming language of choice.

Well, that means everything then: a variable, a constant, class, function, module, etc. right?

In Ruby, modules and libraries, basically.

I don't really consider stand-alone functions/classes necessarily software components. Even though technically they are..

okeyxyz:

Well, that means everything then: a variable, a constant, class, function, module, etc. right?

I don't really think so, i say this because some say that a component must conform to a component model such as com, ejb, .net, corba etc.

ekt_bear: In Ruby, modules and libraries, basically.

I don't really consider stand-alone functions/classes necessarily software components. Even though technically they are..

I would not consider a class as a component either because from c#/.net standpoint, a complied class(.netmodule) on its own is not depolyable it must be part of an assembly(.dll) to be deployable.