The Software Side of Hardware

Our computers nowadays have a lot of hardware to make them function. We have the CPU, the motherboard, the RAM, the solid state drives, all sorts of components that go into how computers process and handle data. But one thing that is critical for most modern computers nowadays is the software side of things. So let's get into software and how it plays a role.

Many names for software

Now, you might have encountered a lot of different names for software: a program, an application, an app, a code script, a suite, operating systems, firmware, drivers, utility, services. A lot of these overlap in their meaning, while some of them are completely different. Some of them have vague meanings, while some are very specific. So really, we don't need to know real in-depth what each one of these are, but we need to understand what the concepts are when it comes to software. So we're going to get more into some of the different names here and what they mean.

Software is instructions for the computer. It tells the computer how it's going to behave and function. Similarly, we could think of a program as a set of instructions for the computer. It's going to tell the computer how to operate and how to function. So what is the difference? Well, a program you can think of as a single set of instructions. Perhaps this is an executable. Executables have an extension .exe at the end of it, and what we would do is we would double-click this program to launch it, and then it would execute the program on the computer.

Software is a program, or it could be many different programs, that tell the computer what to do. An example might be Windows 11. Windows 11 is software. However, there's a lot of programs that all make up Windows 11. So it's not just one program, it's many different programs working together to give us that Windows 11 environment that we may be used to.

System software and application software

To help us better understand what software is, we can break it down into different categories. We could have system software, or we can have application software. Application software are those applications or those programs that allow us to carry out some sort of function, whether it's maybe writing out a letter, or tracking some sort of data, or perhaps it's playing a game on the computer. It really helps us perform some sort of function. Versus the system software is really designed to help the computer maintain some sort of operational state and keep it up and running.

We can break down system software into three categories. We could say that it's an operating system, drivers, and utilities. Operating systems allow our computer to operate. It gives that initial set of instructions and that environment that we're used to dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and keeps some consistency amongst the different applications, so that way our menu items and our different ways that we interact with our applications remains somewhat similar. Drivers are the set of instructions that help the operating system function and coordinate between the operating system and our hardware. Drivers are necessary for our computer to be up and running. Utilities are those programs that help us manage our system. So there's different types of utilities out there that can help us troubleshoot issues on our computer, or help us carry out some sort of function on the computer to keep it up and running.

We can break down application into a lot of different categories, things like gaming or business application. So really it's a broad category for anything that just helps us carry out some sort of function.

In the next few videos, we're going to take a look at an operating system, drivers, utilities, and application. We're going to take a look at some examples and see how they add functionality to our computer and what role they play.