Programming Software Development Process

    According to Tanmay Chakrabarty,  “A software development process is a structure imposed on the development of a software product.” (Chakrabarty, 1^st paragraph)  The following are the steps of the software development process in order: Gathering requirements, planning, modeling or organizing, tools or techniques, implementation, testing, deployment, and updating.  After seeing how many steps there are involved in creating a successful program my first thought is, is it necessary to complete every step of the process?  I’m eager to create a program and be able to say I made it.  I’m pretty sure the answer is of course every step is necessary.

    After researching where the most time spent as a program developer occurs, I found the following answer: “Understanding code is by far the activity at which professional developers spend most of their time.” (Hallam, 2015) Specifically Hallam describes his time spent in the following areas: 

New Code:                         2%

Modifying Existing Code:     20%

Understanding Code:         78%

     In another article, Phil Johnson states, the following which makes me tend to believe programmers in fact do spend the most time understanding code:

“While some bugs can be quickly found and squashed, others can be maddeningly elusive and can lead to many lost hours of good development time, not to mention a bit of a coder’s sanity.” (Johnson, 2015, 1^st paragraph)

   Going back to Chakrabarty’s steps, understanding code and debugging must fit in the testing phase.  If I had to guess, the majority of time spent by coders most likely varies from developer to developer, and project to project.  For example, a solo developer who writes programs for small online enhancement reasons (such as a hacker, creating a password cracker or a chat room scroller) is more than likely not putting the amount of detail and preparation into their projects as say Peter Hallam of Microsoft (who works on the coding for the C# compiler).  I do however agree that all of Chakrabarty’s steps are equally important in the outcome of the program, and do understand that in the real world choices will have to be made as to which of these steps you choose to dedicate your time to.

References

Chakrabarty, T. (n.d.). Explain the steps of software development. - Computer Programming. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from http://tanmayonrun.blogspot.com/2013/01/explain-steps-of-software-development.html

Hallam, P. (2006, January 4). Peter Hallam's WebLog. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/peterhal/archive/2006/01/04/509302.aspx

Johnson, P. (2015, September 17). The terrible 10: Programmers' biggest frustrations. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from http://www.itworld.com/article/2984536/development/the-terrible-10-programmers-biggest-frustrations.html#slide4

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