Throughout these past couple of months, I feel like I have learned a lot when it comes to software development. There are a couple of concepts that have stuck with me in this class which are, coding standards, UI frameworks, and the ethics side of software engineering. These are three things that I believe are very important when it comes to software development and I will talk about them here.
Coding standards are basically a set of rules that every software engineer should follow. We need to have these standards in place for a multitude of reasons, one of them being the readability of a program. If one developer in a team decides to not follow coding standards, their section of the code will not be able to be worked on by other people on the team. If the rest of the team members cannot read the code and what it is doing, it would almost be impossible to help them if they needed it, and it could also be very challenging for the rest of the team to implement that section of code. Another reason why coding standards are so important is because sometimes these standards make sure a set of code works as intended. For example, you cannot have the same variable for multiple different occasions. Your code will not work as intended if you do so.
UI frameworks, or user interface frameworks, are basically a set of blueprints that software developers can use to create their applications. It makes it a lot easier than having to basically do everything off of the base HTML. Bootstrap is a good framework that we use along with React and Meteor. Instead of putting everything into a style sheet, you can immediately style a section of your page just by adding a class to that section. It makes for a faster process when creating your website as you do not have to go back and forth between that file and a stylesheet that you made. It does not get rid of the use of a style sheet entirely, it just makes for a faster process.
One last very important thing is the ethics behind software development because nothing is more important than your morals. When you are called upon to do a project, it is important to not do it blindly and to think about what this program you are making is going to do. Not every single thing you make is going to have a clear purpose and you have to make sure what you are creating does not have the potential to harm others. It is important to follow your morals first as most of the time, your morals are probably what is right, depending on what type of person you are.