Softcode

Keep things soft (as in softcoding) wherever possible. Visit a lawyer and make 'parameterisation' your middle name; it'll sound good at parties, and changes to the system will be far less painful.

1997, Barbara L. Maia Goldstein, Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers, Plug and play software for agile manufacturing, SPIE-International Society for Optical Engineering Best of breed component approaches are better supported because of the softcoding of much of the factory model and integration logic.

I have used this technique to build very flexible code generators, softcoded calculation engines for users, and much more.

[…] you will need to consider the business requirements first, and only then encode them in your application. Let's discuss two approaches to this: the traditional “hardcoded” technique and the “softcoded” rules-based approach.

Given the rationale for softcoding, it is clear that you should softcode attributes that may not be known until run time. For simplicity and improved performance, you can hardcode attributes that are certain.