Web development vs software development

[Niheel]

Does web development fall under the umbrella of software development?

I recently encountered a group of software developers who worked for a large consulting company. I was at their offices getting trying to get some insight into the world of team software development.

One of the developers started what became one of the most heated discussions i've ever encountered in a work environment. Is web development the same as software development?

Do you believe that web development is software development? Do you believe it's something totally different?

I would love to see what you have to say about this topic.

[Terry Burns]

Some of it is

It's an interesting question.

The only code a computer actually performs is binary instructions which are part of the processor's command set. This is the lowest level one can program at.

However, this is not realisic to use so we developed programming languages which abstract us from the underlying non human readable format and allow us to express our intent in a more freindly format. This means either we compile the friendly format down to machine code or we write code which is interpreted by a runtime program.

The in the first example, we are truly writing software which generates real executable code so this is a no brainer. However, in scenario two where we write symbols for the runtime to intepret, this begs the question is this software and the answer is yes because the only difference is that the computer itself is absracted by the runtime and essentially becomes our virtual computer if you like.

So when we consider web development, is this not really just another abstraction in as much as the browser is our abstraction agent and the HTML elements form part of the instruction. I think so personally. Today the word software has become blurred because of the wide variety of ways we get an end result from giving an instruction.

In short anything which can be changed as an instruction is 'Soft' rather than 'hard' and so could be considered software. Where 'hard' means code which cannot be changed such as the machine code interpreter inside a processor chip. And 'soft' means you can edit it and re-run it.

Terry Burns

http://trainingon.net

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Does web development fall under the umbrella of software development?

I recently encountered a group of software developers who worked for a large consulting company. I was at their offices getting trying to get some insight into the world of team software development.

One of the developers started what became one of the most heated discussions i've ever encountered in a work environment. Is web development the same as software development?

Do you believe that web development is software development? Do you believe it's something totally different?

I would love to see what you have to say about this topic.

[Niheel]

I like your explanation.

To me, code is code and the web just makes it that much easier for programmers to develop applications that are very easier to distribute. All it takes is a link to "hereismywebsof tware.com" and boom the user is there, ready to use it.

[glegipon]

Yeah, must have been the language difference that caused the discussion to become "heated." One person was saying, "No, it's code that the computer interprets," and the other was saying, "No, they're completely different programming languages and code!"

Would have been funny if you video taped it for America's Funniest Home Videos!

[aminorex]

A grey scale

Does web development fall under the umbrella of software development?

While in the most general terms, web development is a subset of software development, they are distinct paradigms, and, as always in language, the reference of the term is centered on its paradigm. Thus, a given activity or development may be appropriately referred to as web development or as software development with complementary degree of accuracy. The waters are muddied by the fact that different communities of speakers and indeed different individual speakers will use the terms with varying paradigms.

Web development often is used to refer to development of systems using tools specific to the html+http world, such as Flash and Javascript, PHP and ASP.NET, while software development is often used in a way which implies a restriction to other tools, such as C++, Java, Lisp. However, web development can be done in C++, Java, or Lisp (in the example) and software development can be done in Flash, PHP, or Javascript, in as much as a program or object which is employed in a non-WWW-context is not web development. Thus we can see that it is more appropriate to use the terms in the more general form, for the sake of clarity, and to use disabiguating qualifiers to specialize usage.

[ablaye]

Web developpement is also software developpment.
As someone said here, code is code.
However, some people tend to make a difference between the scripting languages (PHP, ASP, TCL/TCK, Perl, etc...) and the programming languages (such as C, C++, C#, Java, etc...) which require to be compiled.

[ascetiic]

heheh!
For .NET Developers everything is same.
They use VB.NET or C#.NET with ASP.NET which is always almost same for Windows and Web (Not exactly similar codes) but 90% coding on codebehind remains same.
Infact Web Development is more complex due to presence of 2 different code handling processes (One for HTML and other for Codebehind).
So there isn't any doubt that a Web Developer is a Software Developer which is more realistic for .NET Developers as they can develop both with same code.
Software Development is a boring and old stuff.
World is in need of web. No one wants to download and install a software wasting gigs on the hard drive.
Eeveryone wants to type the URL and start working.

The seperation is not of software vs web It is more of the System programming and Application Programming.