The Upgrade Stage

Over time, your program gets old, functions get outdated and the competition releases something better. At this point, one or more of the higher ups will ask for a change, either an update of the existing program or something straight from scratch. Since companies don’t make money repairing software, the usual case is that they create new versions of their programs and offer that with additional features and options that most people probably don’t use or need in the first place. It’s a marketing ploy yes, but it’s fairly effective.

1. Determine what change is needed – If you’re the chief engineer of the program then you have a say on whether an update or a new product is needed. Otherwise you usually just need to listen to your boss >_<
2. What to retain and what to add – This is usually the best time to survey what the user’s reactions to your program are. What features do they use the most and least? What features they need and want? It’s not always about you.
3. Plan things out – You usually just can stick a line of code for a new feature and hope it’ll work out of the box. Usually you’ll break something when you add something new so some backend programming to ensure that everything’s fine is necessary.
4. Test the new features – Fairly obvious. Scrap the addition if it breaks the program or rewrite the code again. You either did something wrong or you’re adding it the wrong way.
5. Repeat the Maintainance Stage – If the new feature works, test if everything else works. Usually anything not associated with the new feature is bug-free but you never know until you test it.

Programming can be defined by less of science and more of art. Despite all the important-sounding titles like “software engineer,” developing doesn’t require a high IQ or an advanced mathematics degree as much as it requires creativity, determination, and plenty of imagination. You can write a program any way that you want, but the best way to prevent possible problems later on is to be organized and methodical in your approach.

—-

Now that the basics are finished, I’m looking into which language to create Crash Courses. First on the list is C++ (because companies still use it and it’s a good language to get started on) and I’m looking into other languages to pick the 2nd and 3rd. If you have suggestions post them here or contact me directly.

Pages: 1 2