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Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

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What type of questions can I ask here?

General scope of this site

Software Development Codidact is about writing software, where software is understood to include any means of specifying computer actions to be performed later. This refers to both general-purpose programming and scripting languages such as SQL and shell scripts.

On-topic

On-topic questions should be about one of the following:

  • Software design, architecture, or modeling.
  • Software implementation: specific programming or troubleshooting problems that include attempts to solve or debug the problem.
  • Best practices, as long as clear "best" criteria are provided. Examples: fastest execution, least memory use, widest tool support for a target, IDE for a certain language and operating system
  • SEO (search engine optimization), as long as they are programming-related (e.g. ensuring website compatibility with different devices and browsers, optimizing website speed and performance)
  • Software development tools: how to install, configure, troubleshoot, and use tools specifically meant for software development (e.g. compilers, debuggers, IDEs).
  • software development process and project cycles specific to the software engineering such as requirements, design, or testing.
  • Software life cycle management: build configurations, version control, release, deployment, etc.
  • Software documentation: how to write it or how to use tools for that purpose.
  • Database management: database design, programming, or access through SQL.
  • Code reviews that follow the guidelines for code review.
  • User Interfaces that involve some programming: mark-up language syntax, how to set properties in RAD tools, how to use graphic libraries, algorithms related to drawing graphics, including to some extent the math and physics behind it.
  • Quality Assurance: programming, scripting, software design & architecture, process, tools, testing, and more.

Off-topic

The following types of questions are off-topic:

  • Asking for implementations of a certain feature or a whole homework assignment. You should include your (partially working) attempts in the post
  • Asking for detailed explanations of posted code, unless the code is small, self-contained, and an attempt to understand it is also included.
  • Simple typos: if the issue was caused by simple typographical errors, the question is very unlikely to be useful for future readers and may be closed.
  • General computer or software support which is not connected to software development/engineering (e.g. ask for recommendations)
  • System, network or server administration questions
  • Embedded systems programming including microcontroller programming, hardware description languages, RTOS questions, PLC programming. Please use Electrical Codidact instead.
  • Project management.
  • Software licensing.
  • UI or graphic aesthetics. What looks best, color choices, graphic design, and similar are mostly subjective questions.

It is important that your question contains enough information that another person can use to help you. After writing the post, please take a couple of moments to review it.