Rural Dictionary

software

(a) Something made in India and exported to the world.

(b) Something soon to be made in China and exported to the world.

(c) Like sex. Lots of people do it badly, a few do okay, and a precious few do it really really well.

(d) The difference between a pile of plastic, glass, metal, and silicon, and a computer, okay?

(e) The instructions that tell a computer what to do. Software is typically written by humans, although machine written software is becoming more common (yes, it now reproduces). Humans write software in "languages" like C# and BASIC. A few crusty old guys (and a few maniacal young guys) still write Assembly code but they are on the fringes of a fringe culture so we can ignore them. Anyway, these languages are an intermediary between normal human languages (e.g. French) and machine language that the computer can actually execute. So there's this other software called a compiler that converts the C# into machine language. And if you know enough to know that's not really true, then you really shouldn't be reading this, should you? I could have chosen 'C' but I didn't so shut up.

(f) You can get it from a CD, a DVD, the web, a floppy disk, a jump drive, or from a street vendor in China for $0.50

(g) Jobs in software? See (a) and (b).

(h) Okay, BASIC is not technically a language. But you can still write software in BASIC and it won't necessarily be complete crap. Really.

When you flip the ON switch, the computer doesn't know if it's supposed to start the engine on your Volkswagon or start surfing the web. Then the software boots and it knows what the hell it should do.

by lanteigne October 13, 2005

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