Design and implementation

Design and implementation of software varies depending on the complexity of the software. For instance design and creation of Microsoft Word software will take much longer time than designing and developing Microsoft Notepad because of the difference in functionalities in each one. Software is usually designed and created (coded/written/programmed) in integrated development environments (IDE) like emacs, xemacs, Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse that can simplify the process and compile the program.

As noted in different section, software is usually created on top of existing software and the application programming interface (API) that the underlying software provides like GTK+, JavaBeans, Swing etc. Libraries (APIs) are categorized for different purposes. For instance JavaBeans library is used for designing enterprise applications, Windows Forms library is used for designing graphical user interface (GUI) applications like Microsoft Word and Windows Communication Foundation is used for designing web services. There are also underlying concepts in computer programming like quick sort, hash table, array, binary tree that can be useful to creating software.


When a program is designed, it relies on the API. For instance, if a user is designing a Microsoft Windows desktop application, he/she might use the .NET Windows Forms library to design the desktop application and call its APIs like Form1.Close() and Form1.Show() to close or open the application and write the additional operations him/herself that it need to have. Without these APIs, the programmer needs to write these APIs him/herself. Companies like Sun Microsystems, Novell and Microsoft provide their own APIs so that many applications are written using their software libraries that usually have numerous APIs in them.


Software has special economic characteristics that make its design, creation, and distribution different from most other economic goods A title of a person who creates software is called a programmer, software engineer, software developer and code monkey that all essentially have a same meaning. Software has its own niche industry that is called the software industry made up of different entities and peoples that produce software, and as a result there are many software companies and programmers in the world. Because software is increasingly used in many different areas like in finance, searching, mathematics, space exploration, gaming and mining and such, software companies and people usually specialize in certain areas. For instance, Electronic Arts primarily creates video games.


Also selling software can be quite a profitable industry. For instance, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft is the second richest man in the world in 2008 largely by selling the Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office software programs. The same goes for Larry Ellison, largely through his Oracle database software. There are also many non-profit software organizations like the Free Software Foundation, GNU Project, and Mozilla Foundation. Also there are many software standard organizations like the W3C, IETF and others that try to come up with a software standard so that many software can work and interoperate with each other like through standards such as XML, HTML, HTTP, FTP, etc.