Construction Practice – Type of Software Egineering practice

The construction activity encompasses a set of coding and testing tasks that lead to operational software that is ready for delivery to the customer or end-user. A set of fundamental principles and concepts are applicable to coding and testing.
1. Coding principles : A number of fundamental principles that can be stated are :
- Preparation principles
* Understand the problem you are trying to solve.
* Understand the basic design principles and concepts.
* Pick an appropriate programming language.
* Select a programming environment.
* Create a set of unit tests that will be applied once the component you code is completed.
- Coding Principles
* Constrain your algorithms by following structured programming practice.
* Select data structures.
* Understand the software architecture and create interfaces.
* Keep conditional logic as simple as possible.
* Create nested loops in a way that makes them easily testable.
* Select meaningful variable names and follow other local coding standards.
* Write code that is self-documenting.
* Create a visual layout.
- Validation principles
* Conduct a code walk through when appropriate.
* Perform unit tests.
* Refactor the code.
2. Testing Principles : It is a process of executing a program with the intent of finding an error. A set of testing principles that have been adapted are :
- All tests should be traceable to customer requirements.
- Tests should be planned long before testing begins.
- The Pareto principle states that 80% of all errors uncovered during testing will likely be traceable to 20% of all program components applies to software testing.
- Testing should begin “in the small” and progress toward testing “in the large”.
- Exhaustive testing is not possible.