Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software

How does one design an electric motor? Would you attach a bathtub to it, simply because one was available? Would a bouquet of flowers help? A heap of rocks?

— Professor Bernardo de la Paz, quoted in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein

Overview

So there you are with your shiny new IDE and your coding skills and a vague idea of what it is that you want to produce. The temptation can be almost overwhelming to dive right in and start typing.

Don’t do it. Even the smallest of projects benefits from at least a little bit of planning up front, and yours is no different. In this chapter, I’ll discuss some of the basic planning steps, including requirements management and choosing a methodology, that you should consider before you write a single line of code.