Back in the early days of 16-bit Windows, applications were commonly configured through the use of INI files. An INI file is a text-based configuration file with an .INI extension. Its structure typically contains named sections that hold configuration data in name-value pairs.
Application configuration that relied on INI files fell out of style when Microsoft introduced its 32-bit versions of Windows, it encouraged developers to store their configuration information in the Windows Registry instead of INI files, however, it is more difficult to deploy and maintain applications in a network environment when they rely on configuration data in the Windows Registry.
In this sense, configuring Windows applications has come full circle, back to the way it was in the beginning using INI files, and .Net Framework now is using .config file.
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