Top 6 Software Development Best Practices You Need to Know

When you are trying to work on a software development project, you need to follow some of the best practices to make sure that the software is going to work and that you can get some of the best results along the way. Too many projects are done with techniques that are outdated and don’t work well, which can spell doom for the project right from the start.

But what are some of these best practices when it comes to software development? Learning what these are and how to use them can make a big difference in the success of your project and how well the software you create is going to work for your users. Some of the software development best practices that you can use include:

Top 6 Software Development Best Practices You Need to Know

1. Use an Application Framework

One of the things that you should consider is an application framework to develop the software, rather than doing it all by hand. These frameworks are going to be a collection of reusable software components that you can utilize to make development a bit easier. They also include some of the tools that you need to help eliminate tedious tasks that take time. 

Many software developers are going to use these libraries, frameworks, and components because they will save them time compared to writing the software by hand. This allows you to focus more on writing the code, rather than handling some of the database management or the file format conversions, which are important, but are not part of the coding.

2. Choose the Right Language

It is hard to change the languages and framework that you choose for a piece of software later on, so you want to make sure that you choose the right one from the beginning. Be picky and selective here because there are so many choices for you to go with. It can depend on what you would like to accomplish with the piece of software that you decide to produce. 

For example, you could do a game in Python, but it is going to have some restrictions compared to using Unity or C# as your coding language. Changing it later on may be possible, but the codebase is so large and bulky that you may have to restart from the beginning rather than converting. Think carefully about the type of coding language you want to use.

3. Make the Code Easy to Understand

You may be the only developer working on the code right now, but is it possible that you will bring in others to work on it with you as time goes on? Or are you working with a whole team of developers to get the work done on the new code that you want to create? If either of these are true, then you need to make sure that the code you write is easy to understand.

Comments and annotations are one way that you can help explain what you are doing in the code, without having it mess with the software that you plan to develop. These two components have been a part of software development for a long time. It can avoid confusion and other problems along the line if another developer comes to help you out.

There is no such thing as too many comments in the work that you are doing. If you are in doubt about whether someone else reading the code will understand what you are doing at any given part, then you need to add in a comment. This is the best way to help with understanding the code and getting it to work with you.

4. Put Reviews In

You should never try to do all of the work of coding a piece of software on your own. It is too easy to make mistakes that can lead to bugs and other problems in the code that you are doing. Working in pairs and having code reviews as part of the process will make a world of difference and can help ensure that your code is perfect when you are done. 

Outside of checking the code on your own along the way, you should also ask other developers to take a look at it as well. They can often find little things that you missed or will give suggestions that could make the code work a bit better than before. Your partners will be able to tell you more about mistakes and ensure that the code works well.

5. Write the Unit Tests Before You Write the Software Code

One of the best practices that you can do as a software developer is to write out unit tests before you start to code. Why is it an issue to write code without testing in place? Unit tests first will be important because they will help ensure that you are able to create some software that does not have vulnerabilities or other bugs. 

As a software developer, you are human and you can make mistakes in some of the work that you do as a coder. It is likely that the first round of your software is going to have some bugs. You will need to have some other software developers take a look at it to help avoid problems, but the unit tests will help.

Writing unit tests is not always easy because you will be forced to think about what the application should do before you even start to write the code. However, this will be useful for you and helps you write stronger code.

6. Creating the Best Software Application Possible

Creating software is an effort of love and can take a lot of time to accomplish. When it is all said and done, you want to ensure that the software application is going to work well and without a lot of bugs and problems. When you utilize some of the best practices above, you will find that you will have the best software for your needs.