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I am planning to develop a software for managing the data of the fitness centre in my locality. I have learned developing softwares using Java and Vb.Net but it was all of college level. Now I want to develop software that is of professional grade and quality. I wanted to know what qualities should be seen when choosing a Software Development Kit for the purpose I have described. Can someone help me with my query?
Developing a software which is of professional quality is not an easy task and one needs to have a proper Software Development Kit to work along with. You should choose a Software Development Kit which will be good for performing automated tests on the software that you have developed code. The portability of your software in different versions of supporting softwares is also necessary. So choose a software development kit that can do this efficiently. The software development kit must be able to bridge between various supporting applications and also it must be able to reuse the developed content over again and again.
Testing is a important part when it comes to software development. It is not that you just have to test the software you have developed when it is completely finished. There is no way that one can make a bug free or problem free software in a first attempt. One needs to keep his/her code under check every now and then. Also every time a small module for the software is developed, it needs to be checked for bugs and errors it might contain. Not just this, when a module is introduced in the main environment, it might happen that it may not function properly. All these must be checked before the software is fully developed. Thus, the software development kit you choose must be such that it will provide you good testing features at your disposal.
If you do some research on software development kits then you will find that many of them provide feature for automatic testing of code every time you add some new content to it. They will provide you real time notifications for syntax errors and logical errors. Usually it happens that the developer unknowingly uses upper case letters in some place instead of using the lower case letters. So the software development kit will notify you with some marking and then you can correct it on the spot itself. Also these software development kits will provide you information about the modules if they fail to connect with some external module in real time. I think you should choose one of these software development kits to save your time and also utilize your skills.
A software development kit should provide a good control over the management of the versions of the supporting softwares. Now that you are developing software, you should be aware what operating system is your client using. But suppose, in coming days he turns towards some other operating system, then your software should be able to match the other operating system too. You must choose a software development kit which will help you make your software available for various versions of the operating system. Also a single operating system has different versions which should be taken care of.
When talking about the versions, let me tell you that even the versions of the hardware and supporting applications is very much necessary. Suppose if you design software that will have some sound effects. While developing the software, you will check these sounds on your computer and they will work fine. But it is possible that you client will not be using same hardware. Different hardware means different drivers. So the software development kit you are using must also be able of providing the software with compatibility with different hardware. So take care that the software development kit you choose is good when dealing with versions.
After a software is developed, it must not happen that size of it will go more than necessary. The size of the software will increase because of the unwanted modules and unused parts. Manually removing each of them is tedious task as you will need to break the links between them and then remove them. This can take time. Many software development kits provide feature using which one can compress the size of their developed application by removing these unwanted parts. See if the software development kit you are choosing provides this feature. It will be necessary to have this feature if you will be developing software which involves use of many images as compressing the images will become necessary.
Compressing a software to reduce its size is a very risky thing to do with a software. Many times it happens that developer gets tempted to reduce the size beyond limits leading to total destruction of software. The compressor starts deleting less important modules but necessary parts creating total chaos. So see to it that software development kit doesn’t overdo the compression or else your efforts will be ruined.
Many times it happens that you developed a module for your software and then you again are making new software after few days when you realize one module or some part will be again needed to be used. At this time, the software development kit should provide you option to reuse the old modules over again. You shouldn’t be spending much of your time developing the module you already made before. The software development kit should provide you option to reuse the modules and also options to modify if needed. Many times it happens that the old software was developed for some different version of operating system and now you need to use it for software meant for different version of operating system. So it must not happen that reused module won’t be compatible with new software. These problems should be taken care by selected software development kit.
After developing a software and providing it to your client you will need to provide upgrades and patches to him in case some change is needed. Choose a software development kit that will provide you with better options for development of these small parts of the software. This again involves re-usability. So choose a software development kit which will help you in this most.
One of the main quality of software developer is knowledge and the experience. So they can work on similar solution. Experience will beneficial to make your solution more user friendly and compatible.