Software Development and Professional Practice

Abstract

Software Development and Professional Practice reveals howto design and code great software. What factors do you take into account? What makes a good design? What methods and processes are out there fordesigning software? Is designing small programs different than designing large ones? How can you tell a good design from a bad one? You'll learn the principles of good software design, and how to turn those principles back into great code. Software Development and Professional Practice is also about code constructionhow to write great programs and make them work. What, you say? You've already written eight gazillion programs! Of course I know how to write code! Well, in this book you'll re-examine what you already do, and you'll investigate ways to improve. Using the Java language, you'll look deeply into coding standards, debugging, unit testing, modularity, and other characteristics of good programs. You'll also talk about reading code. How do you read code? What makes a program readable? Can good, readable code replace documentation? How much documentation do you really need? This book introduces you to software engineeringthe application of engineering principles to the development of software. What are these engineering principles? First, all engineering efforts follow a defined process. So, you'll be spending a bit of time talking about how you run a software development project and the differentphases of a project. Secondly, all engineering work has a basis in the application of science and mathematics to real-world problems. And so does software development! You'll therefore take the time to examine how to design and implement programs that solve specific problems. Finally, this book is also about human-computer interaction and user interface design issues. A poor user interface can ruin any desireto actually use a program; in this book, you'll figure out why and how to avoid those errors. Software Development and Professional Practice covers many of the topics described for the ACM Computing Curricula 2001 course C292c Software Development and Professional Practice. It is designed to be both a textbook and a manual for the working professional. What youll learn How to design and code great software What methods and processes are available to help you design great software How to apply software engineering principles to your daily coding practice Howto tell a good design from a bad one? Understand the characteristics of good programs How to construct professional standard code that you can be proud to show Understand all about coding standards, and apply them to real Java coding Explore debugging, unit testing and modularity All about object-oriented programming (OOP) design principles and great coding How to apply the principles you've learned to specific and real-world coding problems A companion to the ACM Computing Curricular 2001 source C202c Who this book is for Software Development and Professional Practice is designed to be both a textbook and a manual for the working professional programmer, and any student of programming who wants to learn the art of the trade. This book assumes you know some Java, enough to read its examples at least, and that you've already done some programming. Now you want to write great code! This book covers many of the topics described for the ACM Computing Curricula 2001 course C292c Software Development and Professional Practice, and will be a great companion to anyone studying this course.