Software componentry is a field of study within software engineering. It builds on prior theories of software objects, software architectures, software frameworks and software design patterns, and the extensive theory of object-oriented programming and the object-oriented design of all these. It claims that software components, like the idea of hardware components, used for example in telecommunications, can ultimately be made interchangeable and reliable. An electronic component is a basic electronic element usually packaged in a discrete form with two or more connecting leads or metallic pads.

Components are intended to be connected together, usually by soldering to a printed circuit board, to create an electronic circuit with a particular function (for example an amplifier, radio receiver, or oscillator). Components may be packaged singly (resistor, capacitor, transistor, diode etc) or in more or less complex groups as integrated circuits (operational amplifier, resistor array, logic gate etc). Software componentry, by contrast, makes no such assumptions, and instead states that software should be developed by gluing prefabricated components together much like in the field of electronics or mechanics.

It accepts that the definitions of useful components, unlike objects, can be counter-intuitive. In general it discourages anthropomorphism and naming, and is far more pessimistic about the potential for end user programming. Some peers will even talk of software components in terms of a new programming paradigm: component-oriented programming.