How does one get into software development?

I would like to design and implement software for healthcare.

How does one get into software development?
First of all you need to have a good understanding of the software life cycle and what exactly software development entails. Software development is often done in teams unless your working for a small company or a small development shop.





I'd say start in a small company and work your way up. Make sure you pick up valuable experience on things like Crystal Reports, SQL Reporting Services (since reporting is a big part of Health care). Also get to know key health care industry jargon, things like HIPAA, understand what they are and what the idea behind these services are. You will also need a good understanding of databases and writing stored procedures and manipulating data. Most health care services accumulate a lot of data and wading through it can often times be very challenging if you don't know how to write good solid queries on the database.





Last but not least, understand the software life cycle, if your going to work in a team environment you have got to know what software development model they are using. Most popular ones are waterfall, rapid prototyping (or Iterative) and Hybrid models. It will also help if you knew what Agile programming or development is since that is a model that is becoming more and more popular these days.
Reply:You can start by practicing, get a compiler and start writing programs. Usually to be professional you need a college degree, preferably Computer Science.





Note: Health care applications are difficult to get into, because they need to be 99% reliable, as bugs in the programs could have terrible results! Everyone I know that works in IT that is healthcare related has about 10 years professional experience.
Reply:look i the times and see if they are advetising