Software Engineering | Useful Things To Know Before Programming
09 May 2024My Experience In Software Engineering
While taking a Software Engineering course, I learned a lot of things relating to Web Development. Not only did I learn how to develop websites and how to design them, but I also learned some essential things that pertain to web development, such as Open Source Software Development, Configuration Management, Functional Programming, Development Environments, Coding Standards, User Interface Frameworks, Agile Project Management, Ethics in Software Engineering, and Design Patterns. Throughout this course, we were taught these valuable pieces of information that are important to web development.
The first thing that was taught in this course was Open Source Software Development. This lesson was introducing us on how to start programming since when starting to programm you need to start somewhere, and people usually start with open source. We were taught the different types of Liscences like, GNU , MIT, and BSD. Each liscence allows for users to use, modify, and distributing code, however depending on which liscene that you use it differs by having rules on distributing the code, compatabilities with other liscences and finaly philosophies. By having different philosophies, that means the philosophies that reflect the individuals and organizations that created that license. Learning about these Licenses were important because if we knew which license did what, then we would be able to easily determin which license we would want to use for our open source code.
Another useful concept that we learned about was Development Environments. In the world of coding, a Development Environment typically refers to the type of software you use while coding for a program or project. In this course, we used software called IntelliJ IDEA, which is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). There can be a multitude of IDEs, but the main purposes of an IDE are: easy access to your files allowing you to code easily, easy editing of any piece of code when needed, usefulness for debugging code because of its ability to easily run and execute the code, and good for project management since it allows the developer to organize files, giving them easy access to the project files that need to be completed. Learning about different types of development environments and what they can do is important for programmers since it allows them to easily work on developing their projects using their IDE.
The final piece of knowledge that I think was important to learn from this class was Coding Standards, this wasn't taught in our course but it was heavily encouraged to follow a good and propper coding standard. Coding Standards are basic rules and formats that any programmer can and should follow. Each programmer has a specific coding standard they follow depending on their preferences, their IDE settings, company policies, or the assignment or project. Following a coding standard is important because when you can read and follow your coding standard, it becomes easier to understand the code compared to code that's not following a specific coding standard. When working in a company or on a group project, following a good coding standard allows other people to easily read and understand the code without the original coder having to explain. If a programmer doesn't follow a proper coding standard, it can make it difficult for others to understand the code because of the improper coding standard. This lesson was properly taught in this course because programmers need to know how to properly present their code to others with a proper coding standard.
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