Software is the code and instructions that tell a computer how to operate, and it comes in many forms—from operating systems and drivers to the applications end users rely on daily. Understanding software types and the key considerations for deploying them in a business environment is essential knowledge for IT professionals.
Software Fundamentals
This right here is my blender, and it has software on it. I know there's software on it because when I turn it on it displays the firmware version that's on this machine. So there's actually software that's running this machine right here, and we're seeing that is more and more common, that things that never necessarily had software before now have both a computer and software built into it.
Simply put, software is lines of code, or instructions, that tell your computer what to do. Without software, most of your computer wouldn't really know how to function. What happens is the software gives it instructions on how it's going to operate.
Software can go by a lot of different names: program, application, app, code, script, TW, operating system, firmware, drivers, utilities, services. These can all be different programs or software that's running on your computer. Some of these terms overlap in their meaning, some of the terms are exactly the same, while other terms actually mean something a little different.
A program is just lines of code that run on your computer. Software can essentially mean the same thing: lines of code that tell your computer what to do, a set of instructions that tell your computer what to do. But the difference between a program and software is that software could be a single program, or could be made up of lots of programs that are working together to give your computer functionality.
There are some installation considerations when we're installing software, things that we should think about. It's not as big of a deal as an individual user. That is, if I have my tablet and I see a program that I like, I install it, I try it out, and if I don't like it I just uninstall it, and it's a pretty simple process. However, it changes a little when you're talking about a business, where you need to consider several things that you wouldn't necessarily consider as much as being an individual user.
Software can be broken down into many different categories. We have system software: things like the operating system, drivers and utilities, a lot of things that come on the computer when we install the operating system. And then we also have applications. This all falls under this umbrella of software.
The main focus of this course is around applications, although we're going to address things that apply to all software.
To a certain degree you can think of an application as being the same as a program or software, in that it is lines of code that tell your computer what to do, but it is a little more specific than that. An application is really just what an end user is going to use to be productive. Maybe it's a word processor, maybe it's a spreadsheet. It's some sort of software that allows them to carry out a specific task that they want to carry out, a specific function that they want to carry out.
In contrast to this, our system software here helps us really manage our computer and makes our computer functional, so that way we can use applications. The whole purpose of the system software is for our computer to be functional enough that we could use these applications.
Now, as much as we'd like the line between these to be super clear, it isn't always completely clear. That is, the operating system may have some software on it that could be considered an application. There might be times when we call an application something that would fall under, let's say, a utility. A good example of this is if you have an IT professional, they might be using certain utilities to troubleshoot the system, and perhaps they would consider that an application because it's helping them carry out some sort of function on the computer. While on the flip side, you might also think of it as just a system software utility that you can use to manage the computer. So the lines are not always clear between these. You might see some definitions that say that there are applications over here that are used, but generally speaking we consider it as being the end user, making them productive and carrying out some sort of task.
If we wanted to, we could also break down applications into several different types. For instance, there is productivity apps: we have word processors for editing documents, we have spreadsheets to be able to track data, we have presentation software so we can present stuff in a graphical way, we have visual diagramming so once again we can show things in a visual way. We have collaboration software, things that allow us to communicate and coordinate with other people, things like email clients, conferencing, online workshops, document sharing, instant messaging software. We also have web browsing software, remote support software, and entertainment: things like watching videos, there's apps to watch videos, there's apps to play games, there's game apps. So a lot of different ways that we can categorize these different applications.
Here I am on a Windows 11 machine, and if I open up the Start menu I can see different apps that are on this machine. One of the things here was, we see Microsoft Edge, and so that's a browsing app so that we can browse the internet. We've got a mail client here. We've got a productivity what we call a suite, which is a bunch of different programs. We've got Photos, so we can edit photos. We've got some games. We've got a place that we can make different art on here, this Paint program right here. We've got Microsoft Clipchamp, which I believe is a video editing software. So we see different apps that are on this machine.
If I wanted to open one of them up, I'd open up Edge, and now this is an application that we can use to browse the internet. This Windows 11 machine I have not installed anything on yet, so you can see all of the default applications that are already installed on this computer.
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