Book Image

Hands-On Software Engineering with Python

By : Brian Allbee, Nimesh Verma
Book Image

Hands-On Software Engineering with Python

By: Brian Allbee, Nimesh Verma

Overview of this book

Software Engineering is about more than just writing code—it includes a host of soft skills that apply to almost any development effort, no matter what the language, development methodology, or scope of the project. Being a senior developer all but requires awareness of how those skills, along with their expected technical counterparts, mesh together through a project's life cycle. This book walks you through that discovery by going over the entire life cycle of a multi-tier system and its related software projects. You'll see what happens before any development takes place, and what impact the decisions and designs made at each step have on the development process. The development of the entire project, over the course of several iterations based on real-world Agile iterations, will be executed, sometimes starting from nothing, in one of the fastest growing languages in the world—Python. Application of practices in Python will be laid out, along with a number of Python-specific capabilities that are often overlooked. Finally, the book will implement a high-performance computing solution, from first principles through complete foundation.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Programming versus Software Engineering

Process methodologies

At some level, all development process methodologies are variations on the theme of managing development within the boundaries of some common realities:

  • There are only so many useful working hours per person per day that can be devoted to a project
  • There is a limit to the available resources, whether in terms of people, equipment, or money, available to a project
  • There is a minimum acceptable quality standard for the project when it's complete

This is sometimes expressed as the Iron Triangle of project management:

The primary concern with respect to the Speed point is timethe most common focus is probably on a project needing to be complete by a specific deadline, or there is some other time constraint that may only be surmountable by adding developers to the team (an increase in Cost), or by cutting corners (a decrease in Quality).
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