Software Development

Software Development

General Overview:

  • Software development is a process by which standalone or individual software is created using a specific programming language through successive phases in an orderly way.

  • It involves writing a series of interrelated programming code, which provides the functionality of the developed software.

Key Components:

  • Requirements Analysis: Identify, gather, and analyse the needs and requirements of the end user.

  • Design: Develop a software architecture with help of the requirements specification document.

  • Implementation & Coding: Start coding the software according to the design plan decided in the design phase.

  • Testing: Check the software for bugs and other issues. Fixes are made until the product reaches the desired quality level.

  • Deployment: The product is delivered / deployed to the customer for their use.

  • Maintenance: Regularly upgrading the software as per user requirements and changing environments.

Software Development Methodologies:

  • Waterfall Model: A sequential design process, used in software development processes, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, and maintenance.

  • Agile Development: An umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development methodologies. Agile development is more flexible and relies on feedback loops with the client.

  • Spiral Model: A risk-driven approach which combines elements of both design and prototyping-in-stages, in an effort to combine advantages of top-down and bottom-down concepts.

Software development tools:

  • Integrated development environment (IDE): It’s software for building applications that combines common developer tools into a single graphical user interface (GUI). For example, Visual Studio.

  • Version Control System: A software that helps software developers to work together and maintain a complete history of their work. For example, Git.

  • Compiler: It is a translator used to convert high-level programming language to low-level programming language. For example, GCC.

  • Debugger: It is used to test and debug other programmes. For example, GDB.

Programming principles:

  • Structured programming: A subset of procedural programming that enforces a logical structure on the programme being written.

  • Object Oriented programming (OOP): Software design paradigm that is based on the concept of “objects”, data structures that contain data, in the form of fields, often known as attributes; and code, in the form of procedures, often known as methods.

Remember to practise coding regularly and to understand different concepts in depth. Knowing the theory is crucial, but the only way to truly grasp software development is by actually doing it.