What do Software Developers do?

Software Development is one of the most highly demanded and well paid jobs in the world right now. Everybody knows that. Naturally, a lot of people want to become a Software Developer. That's why, you see all those programming bootcamps and university majors rising in popularity currently.

However, a lot of those people get into programming without actually realizing what Software Developers do. They think that all we do is sit in front of a computer and write some code. They spend months and years without achieving much success. And that is only natural, I think. How are you supposed to have a successful career if you don't have a general picture of things and don't plan accordingly?

Are you getting started with programming? Then read this and plan ahead.

Software Development isn't just programming. Programming is a large part of it, but just knowing how to code isn't going to take you far.

The idea behind most software development projects is to automate a manual process, or to create a new automated way to do something that was too difficult to do manually.

Think about Google. Without it, we would be searching for information in books, newspapers, TV and radio.

Think about the word processing software I am using right now. I happen to be typing this very text in https://telegra.ph/. Without it, I'd have to type this on a typewriter or hand write it.

I think you get the point.

Let me stress a very key concept that you should understand as early as possible as you start your journey as a Software Developer:

You have to know how to manually do something before your can automate it.

Understanding the Problem

A lot of beginner software developers jump right in and start coding when given a task without fully understanding what they are supposed to do. It is fine for learning purposes but not for creating production-ready software.

The process of software development always begins by first understanding the problem to be solved. In other words, what are you automating?

Different software methodologies (Agile, Waterfall and etc.) do this in different ways but the main point is that you have to gather some requirements and an understanding of the problem you are trying to solve before you start writing to code.

For example, it could involve talking with your potential customer about what needs to be built and how it should work.

Design

You don't build a house by randomly nailing two pieces of wood together. You design your house first. You create the architectural blueprint.

Just like that, once you understand your problem to be solved, you come up with some kind of design for how the problem is going to be solved in code. Let me emphasize this again. You do this before any code is written.

Writing the Code

Once you have some idea of the design of the software, it is time to start coding. Coding is a large discipline so I won't cover it here. But I can recommend you some books. If you are a beginner, read Code Complete by Steve McConnell. If you have some coding experience, read Clean Code by Robert Martin. They will help you learn how to write and structure your code so that it is easy to understand and maintain.

Debugging

Although debugging is a part of writing code, I think it deserves a separate heading because you will spend a lot of your time debugging in your career.

Just so it is not clear what it is: Debugging is figuring out why your code - or someone else's - doesn't work.

Testing

The code is written, time to ship it to customers, right?

Wrong. Now comes the testing part. You don't want your customers using a buggy software and then complaining.

It is true that there are usually Quality Assurance (QA) engineers that are responsible for the quality of the software but it is unprofessional to pass your code to them without testing it thoroughly first. Don't use them as bug catchers.

Deployment

Once your code is tested, it's ready for deployment. It is the process of getting the finished software to your actual users. Depending on your software, it could be installed on a server or put into an app store. This process can be quite complex as well. Sometimes more complex than writing the code. That's where continuous integration comes in but it is out the scope of this post.

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As you can see, there is more to Software Development than just writing code. Now you know what your future career will involve and can prepare accordingly. Hopefully, you see now that focusing only on the code-writing part would leave a lot of gaps in your knowledge.