The Development of Software - Research Paper Example

Introduction

Software development refers to the process by which individual or standalone software is created by applying certain computer codes or programming languages. In other words, it involves writing a sequence of interconnected programming codes, which enhance the functionality of the anticipated software. Software development is sometimes called software design or application development. Alternatively, software development may also be perceived as the iterative logical processes aim at creating programmed or coded software to address a given challenge, unique business scenario, or individual objectives. Developing software is often a planned inventiveness that involves numerous steps and procedures. Computer software encompasses diverse applications set under different codes; the development of such applications is essentially achieved through computer programming which is usually carried out by the software engineer or a programmer. The above process, therefore, requires initial research, process flow design, data flow design, technical documentation, flow charts, testing of the software, debugging, and other techniques in software architectures. The above process is known as the software development life cycle. The quality and compatibility of the software to perform the intended function depend on the phases of development as well as the effort and technical knowledge of the developer. The continuous need for better quality control in the process of software development has led to the rise of software engineering, which aims at utilizing systematic approaches represented in the engineering paradigm. A wide variety of software development frameworks have advanced over the years, each with its own weaknesses and strengths. In the modern technological world, there are diverse approaches when it comes to software development, some encompass engineering-based and a more structured method to develop a business solution, on the other hand, others may a more incremental style, a scenario where the software evolves as it is being developed step by step.

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Introduction of Software Development

Over the years, computing has experienced incredibly rapid technological transformation. From the historical massive machines such as ENIAC computers to the introduction of smartphones, there has been a tremendous change in communication and facilitation of processes in different fields (Jones, 2014). The improvement of the above hardware, however, could not have been possible without the complementary birth and progress of software development. From spreadsheets and operating systems to mobile games and apps, individuals interact with the software every time they use their computers. The software is the interface between the computer programs or systems and the people who use them. It consists of programming commands as well as the data that instruct the computer how to perform various tasks. In the modern era of computing, instructions are largely coded in higher-level language which is easier to use by human programmers and thereafter converted into low-level machine codes that computers can comprehend. Tom Kilburn, a computer scientist, was the first person to write the World's first software in the year 1948 at the University of Manchester (Jones, 2014). Kilburn, together with his colleagues built one of the first computers. The computer was thereafter programmed to execute mathematical calculations by using coded instructions. The above piece of software only took fifty-two minutes to accurately compute the greatest divisor of two to the power of eighteen (Jones, 2014).

Decades after the development of the first software, computers were programmed or coded with punch cards where holes represented certain machine code guidelines. Fortran was one of the very first higher-level programming languages that were initially published in the year 1957 (Jones, 2014). Some other pioneering programming languages that were invented after the first code include BASIC, Cobol, C, and Pascal. In the years the 1970s and 80s when the world experienced the arrival of personal computers, the use of the software became popular, as more people wanted to use their computers in different ways (Jones, 2014). The software was written in different specialized assembly languages so that everyone in possession of the computer could use them in diverse ways. With the increase in software development, several companies such as IBM entered the growing software market with a computer such as IBM PC, which was introduced in the year 1981 (Jones, 2014). Software for business and productivity dominated the early days of personal computing. Different software applications such as Microsoft Word, AutoCAD, and Microsoft Excel, were developed and released in the mid-1980s. In the 1990s, there was the introduction of open-sources software, which is regarded as the major innovation in the history of software development (Jones, 2014). The software was mainly driven by an increase in the use of the internet. With the increase in software development, there were increased human-computer interactions with many operations relying on different computer applications (Jones, 2014). Through software development, organizations and individuals have greatly improved their productivity as they are able to obtain applications or software that directly target whatever they do.

Currently, software development has become a global practice, it is universally taught in various institutions across the globe even in places where one may not recognize it. Some of the coding languages such as Cobol and C have survived the test of time and they are still in use. Some of the recent programming languages in software development such as python and Java have been applied in various software development projects. Additionally, other languages such as Apple's Swift programming languages for Go Open source or iOS are relatively exciting and new. The introduction of software engineering was not possible until programmers started finding solutions to problems that did not have existing solutions. Most of the coding was done in the academic contexts in an attempt to develop things such as basic operating systems and methods of output and input. However, the above projects were complex, but as research, they did not need to scale, the researchers only needed to work. It was until the late 1960s when the first actual and larger software projects were attempted commercially, and the software actually performed.

The introduction of software development was facilitated by the need to solve different problems that proved to be complex in the education and scientific fields. In the early days, programmers, software engineers, researchers and managers discovered various problems that did not have a clear solution. Some of the concerns include the good processes of building a solution for solving problems that did not yet have a solution (Casey, 2010). People knew that the software could find the solution to complex problems, therefore, the main idea was to understand how the software work and the processes that are essential in its development. Before the introduction of the software, numerous teams of researchers could not retain the ideas of individuals, hence, there was the need to store the information and ensure the processes are done even in the absence of people with great ideas, developing the software to retain ideas formulated by smart individuals was, therefore, the best approach towards proving solution to the complex problems (Casey, 2010). In some other cases, it was not easy to continue with the project when no one in the team understands every part of the project. Additionally, one of the major questions towards the development of the software was how to prevent people from clobbering each other's work while working in parallel in a given project. The above evidence is the foundation of software engineering and additionally, the core contents of software development. Today, people use software to solve different problems ranging from academics to research. The majority of programmers have also used the foundational approaches to come up with complicated applications such as operating systems that can support other programs. With the growth of technology in software engineering humans have been able to find a solution to numerous problems that proved to be difficult in the periods when there was no computer software (Casey, 2010).

Trade-offs Presented by the Software Development

The development in software technology has compromised human thinking in the attempts to provide a solution even to the problems that appeared manageable in the research and educational programs. Today, people turn to computers to find a solution to different problems. With the help of software, individuals can formulate problems and instruct the computer to provide the solution in the desired ways (Barr, 2018). With the existence of the software, many organizations can perform numerous works even in the absence of employees, this, therefore, means that there is a reduction in the processes of interaction and job opportunities. Because computers, with the help of software, are much faster when it comes to the processing of information, there is no need to apply the old processes that involved a large number of people. With the increase in software development, organizations are often on the verge of reducing the number of employees and instead employ those who are in a position to develop software for performing certain tasks that are helpful to the organization (Barr, 2018). Software trade-off refers to the formation of the division of responsibility for undertaking system functions between firmware, software, and hardware. The above scenario is part and parcel of the essential processes in defining computer architecture.

With the development of software, computing took a different path with many people ignoring the earliest forms of computing which seemed to have dominated the world. Many people found it easier to use an integrated software system that could provide updates that literally came on a millisecond basis or less. The application of the software is important to most folks, but in some cases, they are not actually real-time critical. Instrumentation in the software code is a classic trade-off (Barr, 2018). The more a piece of given software code is instrumented, the more an individual can understand timing behavior and the ordering of the code in the process of execution. On the other hand, extreme instrumentation in the software code often increases execution time and sternly complicates the isolation of timing-related bugs. Software development also involves the inclusion of add-on devices or peripherals, a situation that increases the design competitiveness of these products. In the earliest computing technology, computers could use single data paths, this facilitated rigorous development of different peripherals with a similar technological approach. However, the development of software has led to the incorporation of different data paths and buses which may not work for all computers due to the diversity in the style of coding. As a result, there was a reduction in the use of the earliest approaches in the development of software, instead, there was the need for the emerging industries to petition the institution of electrical and electronics engineering to design a standard bus. In other words, the development of software overcame the use of the earliest computer electrical technologies (Barr, 2018). The introduction of the electronic standard bus led to the standardization and expansion of the m...