What is software engineering? According to wikipedia it is applying an engineering design process to software development. The resulting software development process has the following elements:

  • Requirements gathering and analysis
  • Planning and design
  • Development
  • Testing and quality assurance
  • Deployment and implementation
  • Maintenance and support

The process is followed with a process model, for example waterfall or agile. In software, iteration is key. One common approach is to build an end-to-end prototype first to see where the complexity lies. The goal is to reduce complexity. Then iterate.

Design is a series of decisions about how the software is to be implemented.

Developing software (implementation) uses software development practices that include version control, coding conventions, refactoring.

Refactoring is the practice to enhance code design and quality without changing the functionality. Hence, it benefits from automated tests, as any change can be verified to still provide the original functionality (covered by the tests).