Well college finished in just over 2 weeks and then im free for the summer to start looking for a proper job...

But an Idea has popped into my head and im not really sure where to start. I'm looking for a simple application that can query a DB etc and provide imformation to the user... That of course is no problem...

But I want to design it so that once it does the requirements it will be fine, but as time goes on new maybe I want to add something more to it, rather than issue a new release? So I'm thinking about designing the whole thing in a modular fashion, so that down the road a user can add a dll or what ever type of file to the application and it will just work, and extend the program...

Think like eclipse* does, a user can download a file and put it in the plugins folder and it will work, and even change the main forms gui if needed.



But I have no idea, on a design level and on a programming level in .Net (or any other language for that matter) how to implement something like this, so what I'm looking for is advice, sites to look at, and maybe even the odd book that would be helpful to give me a starting point?


*yes, eclipse... just after finishing a java based college project, it in my head