If you’re not very tech-knowledgeable, you may not know all that much about how programmers design software. You might not spend a great deal of time thinking about how they sit up for hours and days at a time, coding. This is their job, but it’s not something with which you’ll ever need to concern yourself.
You can interact with that software once the creators release it out into the world. At that point, they will have done all the coding, and hopefully, they will also have figured out any bugs that existed. Later on, they might release additional versions of the software that have patches which fix any issues that showed up once the public started interacting with it.
You may not have ever really stopped to consider it, but you’ll want to see certain features from any software you use, regardless of its intended purpose. Let’s talk about what developers should include with any software they make.
Security Features
Everyone who does anything online should think about security, and most individuals and companies do. For instance, many business owners these days consider how to maintain remote worker network security. They’ve needed to think about such things because of how many employees work from home these days.
A reliable piece of software or entire software suite should feature the best available security features. Otherwise, you have to worry about hackers who might want to crash your network, steal money from you, or reveal sensitive information that might harm your company.
Whether you’re using software at work or at home during your downtime, you want it to have security features that will not reveal anything classified to someone who might wish to see it without your consent. Software security features might include authorization tests, authentication tests, and also logging and encryption considerations.
Functionality
If you use a particular software often, you’ll want it to do whatever the creator intended for it. For example, if you’re using software through which you’re trying to buy something, you need to be able to find the item you want, put in your mailing address, and then hand over your credit card information accordingly. This describes eCommerce basics, but you can use software for many other things as well.
If your software’s functionality ever breaks down sometimes while you’re using it, you probably won’t be too happy about that. It might lead to you using a different software if there are any similar competitors available.
If you’re using an app, that’s a kind of software. If the app does not function the way you want it to, you can always reach out to the creator via the App Store or wherever else you got it. They will appreciate knowing that their software is not functioning like it should be, and they should get to work quickly to fix the problem.
Portability
Software portability is not something that used to matter quite so much, but it matters more than ever in 2021’s latter half. That is because a time came not that long ago when more individuals started using software, in the form of websites and apps, while on their smartphones and tablets than those using laptops and desktops at home.
They started buying things online while sitting at bus stops and while riding on public transportation. They began using software to read novels or magazine articles while flying on airplanes.
Because of this, software portability became a significant developer concern. Devs started to see that they needed to make their software as portable as possible, and if they were not able to do that, they could not enjoy as wide of a market share. At this point, portability has to be a feature that a dev team addresses before they allow any software to go public.
Efficiency
Software needs to be efficient these days as well. Think about how frustrating it becomes if you try to use inefficient software via an app or website. If you have to wait an inordinately long time for the software to do what it’s supposed to, you are not going to be too thrilled about that.
Studies show that human attention span has dropped since smartphones hit the market and since social media has exploded in popularity. Everyone who uses software wants it to be as efficient as possible.
If a dev or dev team is not able to accomplish that with some particular software, they definitely need to go back to the drawing board and rethink it. Efficiency and functionality relate directly to each other, and a software’s user is undoubtedly going to look for both when they take it out for a spin for the first time.
Maintainability
Maintainability is also something you’ll want from your software, but it’s not necessarily something that the average users think about all that often. Maintainability refers to software or a software suite’s ability not just to function but to keep working as time passes.
No software will remain perfect forever. That is why the software’s creator needs to come out with those patches periodically that we alluded to earlier.
If you’re using the software and you’re not managing it in any way, you want to be able to simply turn on your computer, go to a website, and see that software functioning properly. You probably don’t think about what it takes to make that happen.
A developer or webmaster will have to use patches and tinker with the software occasionally to make sure that it stays functional. Usually, that will only involve little changes here and there, but sometimes major code rewrites have to take place, especially if a particular security concern has come up.
Things like usability, reliability, and security are what make the best software examples. Software is malleable. It is never permanent, and the original creators need to constantly refine it, or the world at large can do so if the devs allow for an open-source setup.
