I am not a developer. I have coded for fun and for university projects in several languages, and during an internship, I have written code which is still in use by a department of Fortune Global 500 company. I also have extensive theoretical knowledge of software engineering - process models, architecture, project management, UI construction using Lauesen's virtual windows... you get the picture. But I am not involved with software development in my job.

I recently decided to start coding for fun again, and now I have some free days to do it. But this time, I want to do it right. I want to write a real, useful application, install it on my devices and use it myself. Also I want to publish it for others to use, should they want to do so.

I am vaguely aware that there is more to writing an application than to writing code. There is stuff like version control software, decision for the right IDE, having a suite of unit tests, producing an installation package - and probably lots of other things I never thought of but which must be taken care of in a proper application, as opposed to a bunch of classes I am running from my IDE.

All this is stuff I should know before I start, but I have not learned it. Coding books touch on some of the subjects like IDE choice, but don't go into detail, and are not exhaustive. Theoretical software engineering textbooks are even less helpful.

So is there a book which teaches exactly that? I know that I can find information on each of these topics on the Internet, but I'd rather have a systematic book exhaustively listing all the things I should take care of if I want to create a good application, and offering the currently accepted solutions for them. In the best case, it will be language- and platform independent, but if you know of a good book focusing on a specific platform, I would like to know about it too.

I know I want a lot, but given how important such knowledge is and how many people need it, surely somebody must have written such a book?