What are main things that a programmer needs to know to code any software?

In theory, a programmer needs to know: What the customer wants How to achieve what the customer wants That's all. ;) (by "customer" I'm including your boss, your client, a peer at your company, or yourself if it's an indie project) In practice, a typical customer doesn't know what they want, and that can mean extensive questions to drill down to what is actually needed. It can also mean prototypes, change orders, and even rewrites on the way to revealing what is actually needed. On the other end, a programmer's job is to take a problem and break it down into pieces. So our programmer needs to know all the pieces. Whatever the domain, they need to have a strong grasp of how things are built in that domain. This includes an overlap between computer science knowledge, development tool knowledge, specific domain knowledge, and practical experience. There is no silver bullet. There's no list someone can post here that will be sufficient for all programmers for all projects. Study a domain and learn it well. Keep learning. Expand into other domains. The more you learn the more capable you will be.

Programming is not the problem. Understanding the problem and finding an appropriate solution - as a design, a pattern - is the problem. When you truly understand the problem, converting that into a program is easy.The trouble is that people ask you to solve problems that are in their mind, nor yours, and which even they have not properly worked out. Teasing the real real problem out of them, and then working out an algorithm which will solve it efficiently, is the hard part. Once you have done that, writing the code is easy.

What's a computer...What's windowWhat's a fileWhat's a keyboardWhat's a mouseWhat's a screenWhat's enter What's escapeWhat's F1What's Alt-F4.What's a copy.What's deleteWhat's well you know... choose something, get imagination.Sold separately.