Category — Development

Creating software is difficult. You need to first get the requirements from the client (or create them yourselves), then you’ll use the requirements and design a working system. Once you’ve designed the system, turn the design into code. Next you’ll test your code to make sure it works and finally deliver the completed project to the client.

Today I’m going to look at the second part of the Creating Software series: The Design phase. There are a number of aspects to designing software. You need to take the requirements you gathered previously and start to create your software. At this point, you’ll have very little code (and possibly none at all). Don’t let this fool you though, the design phase is extremely important, and many projects have failed because they either didn’t design, or improperly designed their software.

Here are three things you can do in the design phase to make your software project more likely to succeed.
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Continuous improvement is a simple ideology that is essentially summed up with the thought that everything should always be getting better. Incase you haven’t noticed, this is contradictive to the way the world works; things just don’t get better on their own. It takes work, often in huge amounts to get things to be better.

The first place you can look to improve is with yourself. A good improvement process is useless if you just sabotage it with your shortcomings. Take a step back and look at how the things you do affect the people around you and the situations that arise within your company. Make note of the negative ones so that you can improve on them.
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The journey to developerism started when I finished grade 10. I was picking courses for next year and I couldn’t figure out which class I should take to fill the last spot. There were a number of options: gym, advanced math, maybe a French course, but one course stood out from the rest; it was computer science.

Since that original class, I have gone on to take my bachelors degree in Comp Sci. and have grown that original interest into a love for programming and development work. While some could say that the original reason I became a developer would be to the lack of other good courses, I have other reasons. Today I’m going to tell you 33 reasons why I became a developer.
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Most software projects follow a fairly similar path from creation to completion. They start with talking to the user, getting the requirements for the project. It moves to the next stage, taking the requirements and getting them on paper (designing your software). After that, you get into coding, testing, bug fixing and more testing, and finally, you show the finished project to the client.

Now I know that I’ve outlined a fairly crude time-line but thats the basics of it. Over the next few weeks I’m going to go over each of the parts of the software project time-line and outline a few of the things that I find difficult.

Today I’m going to start off with the first in the list and also the hardest in the time-line; talking to the client and getting the requirements.
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Every programmer will, at least once in their lifetime, have to work in a group setting. Most software today is just too large for a single developer to work on.

Programming with a group is a much different experience than programming by yourself. You need to worry about other people’s code, getting along with other developers and making sure your own material is up to standards. It can be a stressful time if you’re not prepared.

Here are 6 tidbits of information that will hopefully help make your group experience a little bit better.
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What does it mean to be a great developer?

Does it mean that you’re the best programmer on the team? Does it mean that you’re extremely successful and famous? While great developers can often answer “Yes” to both of those questions, it takes a much broader skill set to truly be a great developer. Today I’m going to look into a few things that can make a developer great.
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One of the most important practices in software development is taking breaks. I know how weird that sounds but its true. Programmers often focus on getting the task done and forget about their own mental and physical health. Taking breaks can help you be more productive, they help rest your body, and they help by letting your brain digest any code you’ve written.

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Every year, thousands of new graduates flood in to the work force eyes wide-open, ready to program. Unfortunately, most of them have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. These inexperienced developers only know a life of coding in the structured environment of their schools and have no knowledge of what it’s like to develop in the real world.

Time and time again, I have seen the stark differences between developing a program in the school setting and one in the business setting and I’m going to share my thoughts with you today.
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“Debugging is twice as hard as writing code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. - Brian Kernighan”

If you’ve been programming for any length of time I’m sure at one time you’ve had the pleasure (or lack thereof) of wading through another persons code. It is definitely not a pleasurable journey when the code is new, written with the newest standards; but when the code is legacy it can be a downright hair-pulling experience.

The problem with a lot of code is that it isn’t written in a maintainable way. Now you may ask, what is “Maintainable Code”? Maintainable code is purely code that can easily be maintained throughout the years and on different platforms. If you asked 100 people that write code for a living you would probably get 100 different answers on how to write your own maintainable code. Below is a list of things that can help you make your code more maintainable.
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If there is one thing that a programmer is constantly doing throughout their entire careers, it is improving their programming skills. The IT industry is one of the most rapidly growing sectors. If you don’t adapt to the new standards and practices you’ll quickly be left in the dust and replaced by newer, more flexible programmers.

The good thing about being a programmer, is that you already have strong skills in problem solving and learning things. This means that learning a new programming language or developing a new skill set shouldn’t be as hard as it would for someone who doesn’t have strong problem solving skills. That being said, learning new things can be a daunting task that can take a very long time. Here are a few tips for increasing your programming skills.
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