Software development essentials provide the basic tools to help create basic programs for various software systems.
Software development is extremely complex and usually takes years to master. Nonetheless, there are essential competencies that a developer must master before beginning the road to lifelong programming.
Design
There are several design concepts that, once completely understood, can lead to more inclusive concepts for projects of any complexity. These include:
- Abstraction
- Refinement
- Modularity
- Software architecture
- Control hierarchy
- Structural partitioning
- Data structure
- Software procedure
- Information hiding
Considerations
There are also many considerations that a software developer must keep in mind in order to result in successful program. These include:
- Compatibility
- Extensibility
- Fault tolerance
- Maintainability
- Modularity
- Packaging
- Reliability
- Usability
- Reusability
- Robustness
- Security
Paradigms
There are paradigms on which software development is based, rendering it essential knowledge for the programmer. These are:
- Aspect-oriented programming, whereby secondary programming functions are separated from primary ones
- Functional decomposition, by which functions are deconstructed so that they can be reconstructed into new functions
- Object-oriented programming, which is the use of data structures comprised of data fields, data methods, and data interactions to design programs and applications
- Post-object programming, developed from object-oriented programming, emphasizes the use of mixins, delegation, aspects, heterogeneous groups, and multimethods
- Structured programming, or layered programming that reduces or eliminates the GOTO command, considered a subset of Imperative programming
- Imperative programming is computing through statements that change the state of a program
- Rule-based programming, or Logic programming, is the use of mathematical logic for computer programming, and is the foundation of Formal Techniques
Databases
Finally, there are databases that render software development substantially easier with templates, big fixes, and other provisions. Types of such databases used by software development companies include:
- Hierarchical, which organizes data into data trees
- Object, which represents data as objects such as those used in object-based programming
- Relational, which organizes data based on similarities in attributes
- SQL/XML, which has data stored in XML format
- SQL, which is the computer language used to construct relational database management systems