Writing good software requires a combination of creativity and discipline. This section is a brief overview of the discipline of software development. There are many approaches to developing software, and the subject can be highly controversial! Look at what others have done and develop a process that works for you or your team. A good place to start is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology. First, we'll outline the formal software development process that is used for large projects. Then, we'll see how elements of this process can be applied to any project.

The first stage is requirements analysis, which is the process of defining and documenting exactly what the software is supposed to accomplish. The requirements are used to write a specification for the project. The specification is then used to define the structure of the program, such as functions, classes, data, methods, and so on. The next stage is writing the actual code, which is...