So, How to Develop Software?

Well, the first thing you should do is read this book. It certainly won't tell you everything, but it will give you a good introduction into what software development is all about and what you need to do to write great code. It has its own perspective, but that's a perspective based on 20 years writing code professionally and another 16 years trying to figure out how to teach others to do it.

Despite the fact that software development is only part of software engineering, software development is the heart of every software project. After all, at the end of the day what you deliver to the user is working code. That code is usually created by a team of developers working in concert. So to start, maybe we should look at a software project from the outside and ask what does that team need to do to make that project a success?