Article
Article
Software
Article By:
Glass, Robert L. Editor-in-Chief, "Journal of Systems and Software," and Editor/Publisher, "The Software Practitioner," Bloomington, Indiana.
Last reviewed:July 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.757374
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- Software, published June 2014:Download PDF
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A set of instructions that causes a computer to perform one or more tasks. The set of instructions is often called a program or, if the set is particularly large and complex, a system. Computers cannot do any useful work without instructions from software; thus, a combination of software and hardware (the computer) is necessary. A program must tell the computer each of a set of tasks to perform, in a framework of logic. People who write software are called programmers or, more formally, software engineers (Fig. 1). See also: Computer programming; Software engineering
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