The source code is usually created manually using an integrated development environment or a text editor, but there are also code generators to automatically generate the code from structured design documents, such as structure charts or UML designs.
Of particular interest are development tools that can re-create designs from draft code and vice versa. In this case, manual changes to the code are transferred again later in the draft. In this way, a round-trip engineering is possible in which the manual modification in the development process can be introduced at any point.
A code can also be (partially or completely) of non-textual form, for example as a graphical link between logical function blocks (for example in Simulink or UML diagram).
The code of a program may consist of several parts, for example, to multiple files (possibly different formats) to be divided, or in part, graphically, in part, textually exist (eg, UML, enriched with method implementations in the programming language used).
To create the code, a simple text editor is usually sufficient. Using the syntax highlighting are the parts of code highlighted in color according to their functionality, which enhances readability.
Also to improve readability programmers usually hold to a particular code formatting (eg indenting of sub-sections). In some languages, a specific code formatting is specified (eg Road Haulage Software), some integrated development environment can automatically format the code (so-called Beautifier).
For large programs consisting of many individual source files, sometimes information is managed, which describe the dependencies of source files among themselves.
This allowed when compiling with a single call to be able to perform all the steps to create the finished program and only have to translate those ingredients again which have been changed in the meantime or are dependent on the modified components. Examples of this are makefiles and Road Haulage Software.
For a better documentation of changes or specific synchronization of multiple simultaneously operating the programmers code is often stored with a software version control, so any changes are later cost.
Translation and execution
Before the program, the programmer writes may be executed by a computer, it has to be so implemented in a computer understandable from the sequence of bits in the machine language.
This can be done offline by a compiler or – done by an interpreter or JIT compiler – runtime. In many cases, a combination is now selected from two variants in the first – usually by the programmer – is translated the code of the actual programming language into an abstract intermediate code, which is the runtime of a runtime environment with an interpreter or JIT compiler in the actual machine code is transferred.
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