Simplified: Modern software development

There are several ideas of software development - also known as programming - that never changes. Programming is how we solve problems. Programming allows you to interact with a machine, albeit automated. It all boils down to programming, which makes millions of machines worldwide accessible to everyone. Programming is never finished; instead, it's an ongoing process.

In modern software development, developers are breaking things down into smaller components, such as the daily applications we use on our phones and computers – even if they aren't immediately apparent to untrained eyes. Developers are building apps that operate in virtually any setting without much concern for where they will execute because they are packaged and deployed in a way known as containers, which makes them run consistently in most situations.

Software used to be a set of instructions that command devices on what to do. This was true a couple of decades ago and will be true again in another 25 years. Nowadays, the software is the technology that keeps machines - and, increasingly, businesses - operating.

The most significant change has been in how engineers write their code and what happens to it when they're done. Here's a quick summary of software development fundamentals and how to convey them to non-technical individuals in your company.

What it used to be: Monolithic software development

The word "monolithic" means "massive" or "all-inclusive." In the past, software development was done in this style. That implies the whole program is built from the ground up, piece by piece. Developers used to test your software on a small scale first, but still, when there was a problem with the code, they would have to deal with the entire application again – and touching one area necessitated touching them all.

Monolithic software was also typically designed to operate in particular conditions – such as on an end user's laptop or a physical server running a specific operating system. If you want to relocate it, you will have to rewrite more code and most likely develop several versions of an app that essentially does the same thing. Monolithic applications still exist - but they are no longer the only option. Furthermore, this is no longer the case nowadays; software can be created once and run in nearly every environment.

Modern software development

Modern methods (like DevOps) and architectures (like microservices) have allowed software development teams to create software more quickly and iteratively – you won't have to endure months before releasing a new feature since you may code on top of the system and release it instead of tinkering with the whole thing. You don't have to worry so much about various settings. Containers, which allow developers to pack their code and all the other components and dependencies it needs to run in isolation, regardless of the environment, relieve you of this burden. That implies that the same containerized application should function similarly on a developer's laptop as in a real server, a data center, or a virtual machine of a managed cloud.

Containers are similar to writing the message down so that it will never be misunderstood, no matter how far it travels. This shortens the time and allows for considerably more rapid, frequent updates – think in days or even hours instead of months.

Maintaining the exact resources you require, with the speed of containerized infrastructure, eliminates the need for interpretation and is thus a great cheat for software development.

How has infrastructure evolved?

Changes in the software's infrastructure provide an extra oomph to faster application development.

The basic rules remain true: Software requires computing devices to function. For some applications, this means a phone or a laptop; other software is run on more powerful computers known as servers, and still, some software runs on both. Zoom, for example, is a PC application that connects calls over the internet utilizing many servers. For a long time, those servers were actual computers that sat in the corporate office, data center, or possibly at a hosting facility elsewhere. But then the cloud appeared and altered everything.

Companies could rent servers rather than buy and maintain them, not to mention a slew of other infrastructure and services with cloud, edge, and fog computing. These game-changer technologies enabled the raw IT firepower once reserved for the world's largest companies and governments to be shared by virtually everyone. It has also allowed small and medium-sized organizations to access advanced technologies that only large enterprises could afford. It's also opened new markets of opportunity – and much faster implementation speeds – that would have been out of reach for those small businesses before.

As enterprises expand and require more computing power for their software, deploying it on each server gets increasingly difficult and time-consuming. Rather than being installed on each server, it may be bundled with all required libraries and dependencies into containers that can be quickly distributed across hundreds or even thousands of servers. Small and medium businesses can outsource their data storage needs. This creates tremendous value in terms of money, freedom, and time. Where it used to take months to set up a data center 20 years ago, today's comprehensive solutions may be deployed with a few clicks, resulting in significant productivity gains. This is a huge turning point in software development history.

Processes, methodologies, and culture changes

The first two tectonic shifts in software development necessitated new ways for teams to work together. IT teams used to be much more siloed and disparate. Developers did their thing, then handed off the code to IT operations (aka infrastructure operations) and never thought about it again. Testing/QA, security, and other roles similarly only touched the software when it was their turn and did so in a piece-by-piece, monolithic process. Sometimes those teams didn't even sit on the same floor or in the same building, even on the same continent…

While distinctions between roles remain, modern software teams have become more heterogeneous and integrated. The boundaries between job functions aren't as rigid, shared responsibility is now a thing, and testing and security are not rudimentary checks before a Friday afternoon deployment.

Building large systems requires more than one engineer, which requires companies to have processes through which the work of multiple people or teams is coordinated. In today's world, most companies use a process called agile development. It allows businesses to quickly adapt to the fast-changing market and ship software that their customers need.

In its simplest form, agile development is an umbrella term that refers to various methods and cultures for developing software. Other good examples are DevOps, also known as DevSecOps, and CI/CD, which stands for continuous integration and delivery.

Modern software is an inseparable part of the business value

In many ways, it's obvious and uncontested that software is critical to almost any business – large or small, public or private – functioning today. This implies that software development is increasingly connected to business value. The benefits of all these evolutionary changes aren't inherent. They're valuable because they enable revolutions.

The notion of software development as a single process is somewhat obsolete in the era of agile software development. Rather than being one single thing, modern software engineering is a collection of methods that can be used to achieve the greatest results while employing the existing IT resources effectively.