FREE online courses on the Basics of a Computer - WHAT IS SOFTWARE - WHAT IS
SOFTWARE
The circuitry of the computer
interprets and understands the data and the instructions which are passed on to
it after translation into a set of 1s and 0s. All internal working is really
done using only two numbers-one and zero, these being represented inside by two
voltage levels. This method of representation and computation is called binary
arithmetic. The user however need not know anything about binary arithmetic to
use the computer as an effective tool.
We have said that the computer
understands only ones and zeros. But we see the computer being instructed in the
usual English character set in what may be called pseudo-English. How does this
get translated into the binary notation that the computer understands?
This is where software comes into
the picture. Software is the means of communicating with the computer. The set
of instructions or programs is software.
Software exists at many levels.
There is software that can translate instructions into the language the computer
understands-the machine language of zeros and ones. There is software that
translates the instructions given into something that this first type of
software can understand, such that the two types of software in tandem result in
a machine understandable version of the given set of instructions. Various types
of software are available and can be used to put together a set of instructions
to make the hardware do what you want.
