You may be reading these lines in a browser on a computer or mobile phone, in your Gmail or Outlook application, or on beautifully designed digital pages. You may have opened your browser to search for jobs, apply for scholarships, use Skype for a business call, scroll through a social feed, or upload content to your organization’s website. You may have used a management information system to generate reports or asked Siri to play a song.
Gmail, Outlook, Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Google Chrome, and the other tools and applications you use on digital devices are software. Developers build them through a process called software development.
Software development includes everything between conceiving the desired software and producing it, sometimes through a planned and structured process. It may include research, new development, prototyping, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or other activities that result in software products like the ones we use every day.
Although software can be applied to a huge variety of uses and contexts, its development follows recognizable processes around the world. Code gives computers specific, logical instructions so programs do what they are designed to do for any person, in any country. Computers, within the limits of their capacity, apply those instructions exactly as they are laid out.
How else would you define software development?