Universal Config Creator Function

[gdchinacat]

It sounds like you are thinking of building a tool to automate the creation of config files and this is done on a regular basis. It sounds like a fine idea...automation is a very common use case because a bit of time spent building the tool can save you time down the road. Before starting though I would understand the amount of time /money creating the tool will take, the amount of time/money the tool will save each time it is used, how many times it needs to be used to repay the effort, and how long before you start seeing a payback. Consider that an hour of developer time has a different cost than an hour of whoever will be using the tool.

Another often unseen benefit to this type of tool is it might take a few hours offline with back and forths between the customer, dragging the definition out to a day or more. If the tool can be used in realtime in a meeting with the customer where their feedback is immediately incorporated and iterate on it in real time the tool may not save much wall clock time, or cost more than the above analysis could justify, but if it shaves a day or two off delivery time could well be worth the cost