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What is "soft" about software?

BeholdTheTruth

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If you think you know what software is -- as compared with hardware (and where firmware fits in), then what is the "softest of software"?
 
Is this like a riddle? Ok, let's say a scrpit running on a browser. It has at least 2 layers of software below it, the browser and the OS. You may even be able to split the OS into more layers, but let's not. I have never heard of software being softer or harder, so I assumed a definition for softness and there you go.
 
Donks said:
Is this like a riddle? Ok, let's say a scrpit running on a browser. It has at least 2 layers of software below it, the browser and the OS. You may even be able to split the OS into more layers, but let's not. I have never heard of software being softer or harder, so I assumed a definition for softness and there you go.
Click to expand...

Well for a start -- and only for a start, table-driven software is more "soft" than non-table-driven software.

So how about if the question now bifurcates into two questions: 1) how far can you make software softer and softer and...?"; and 2) what well-known "program" of sorts is the "softest of software"?
 
I don't think that it would be to difficult to find a good answer to this on wikipedia or such but I am willing to take a shot at it here. I think to ask why it is called software it makes it easier to understand if you take a look at hardware. You can look at hardware easially as a hard-wired program. Software then is by definition more maliable in comparrision to hardware. Such that you can easially transform it into your needs. You can copy it or delete it. Something that is more difficult to do with hardware. You need a sledgehammer for that.

Maybe that is a bit of a simplified/whimisicle definition. A better one is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software.
 
Self-modifying / self-generated code is pretty soft.

The softest software is Katamari Damacy. It's downright sticky.
 
chasing23 said:
You can look at hardware easially as a hard-wired program. Software then is by definition more maliable in comparrision to hardware. Such that you can easially transform it into your needs. You can copy it or delete it. Something that is more difficult to do with hardware. You need a sledgehammer for that.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but... A game on a ROM cartridge is also called "software". Maybe the best way to look at it is this: hardware is the hard parts of your computer, and software is so named because there is no hard distinction with hardware. ;)
 
Hardware refers to something that is physical whereas software doesn't. Software requires a physical media but the physical media is provided by the hardware. There is no softer or harder software there is just software and hardware.
 
A game on ROM cartridge is more properly called "firmware." It and other ROM-based code/data can be changed by replacing the ROM or by erasing it and storing new stuff in it ("flashing" is what this is called with modern, rapidly reprogrammable ROMS).
 
Meffy said:
A game on ROM cartridge is more properly called "firmware." It and other ROM-based code/data can be changed by replacing the ROM or by erasing it and storing new stuff in it ("flashing" is what this is called with modern, rapidly reprogrammable ROMS).
Click to expand...

Agreed - but the 'firmware' is essentially a category of hardware. The physical media is the ROM and the stuff that is put onto it is software.
 
Earthborn said:
Yeah, but... A game on a ROM cartridge is also called "software". Maybe the best way to look at it is this: hardware is the hard parts of your computer, and software is so named because there is no hard distinction with hardware. ;)
Click to expand...

It makes sense that a game on a ROM is software. It isn't physically wired to do it's task. It is just the same as a set of instructions that you might write on a peice of paper. Instead of written on the paper it is written to the ROM which is just another form of media.

Would it be better to say that the hardware is the machine and software is the instructions to run the machine?
 
I see it the way chasing23 does -- to me firmware is closer to the software end of things than the hardware end. The ROM itself is hardware without a doubt.
 
Software is transferable (technologies permitting) from media to media. Hardware is a single instance of a physical thing. 'Firmware' is a term of convenience.
 
I would think that a program which runs entirely independently of any direct control of hardware would be "the softest". In other words, software which runs 'on top of' another complete layer of software, and this 'bottom' layer emulates all the functions of the hardware which the program uses.
 
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