What is software?
Software and its type: All of you must know that any computer is made of hardware, meaning that any hardware parts such as hard disk, RAM, motherboard, CPU etc. are used for making any computer but here But the question arises that who handles all these hardware parts and how do they work? There will be someone who will give instructions to them, there will be someone who would help all those hardware parts to do different things. This is nobody else, not only and only software. The software only handles all these hardware parts and all the parts that are made for this work help in doing the work. Now this is the work of software but how many types of software are there? What is the definition of software and who makes this software? Let's try to find out all this.
Software Definition: As mentioned above, as the software has been told to manage all hardware parts with instruction, then by continuing it, we say that the software is a collection of many instructions which the user interact with the computer and its hardware. Helps in doing so that the user can perform the task. All computers without any software are useless and they are a dead electric device that can not do anything. As long as the operating system is not available in the computer, no work can be done on the computer, after installing the OS software, if you have to search any information on the internet then you will need internet browser software for it. Similarly, installed ms word, ms excel or ms paint software on your computer can do different things. Thus software means - set of instructions which help in managing a device or performing any of your tasks.
To create computer software, you need knowledge of programming language. These programming codes can also be machine-level codes and also the high level language code. Now you use the machine level language or the high level language depends on the purpose of which you are creating software for the purpose of creating OS level software, you have to control the machine or hardware, then you should come to machine level code. While creating browsers, or any other type of user application, you can use high level language. Once the software is created, they can be updated as per the requirement.
Software vs hardware: As the software is a general term for different programs or applications, different parts of the hardware term computer or physical parts are called. It is worth mentioning here that you can only feel any software that you can see on the computer screen but can not touch the physical while you can touch the hardware and also see it.
Computer software has been divided into two main categories based on their work - (software types and types of software):
Application software: Application software is often called applications, productivity programs or end-user programs as it is designed on the basis of the user's requirement and helps to meet the user's specific goal or task such as creative Documents, spreadsheets, databases, email programs, or playing games. Application software mostly performs the defined task, and this work can be from small to very large (according to the user requirement) such as calculator application to complex word processing application. Examples of Application software -
✔ MS Word
✔ DBMS Software - MS access, Oracle etc
✔ Web browsers - IE, Chrome etc
✔ Games Software
✔ CAD / CAM software
System software: These software can be operated directly on computer hardware so that user and other software can be provided functionality as per the requirement. System software works as a middle-layer between hardware and user applications in a way. Example of System software -
✔ Operating system
✔ Device drivers
✔ Utilities
Regards- Moneymantra
