What is "soft" about software?

[Soapy Sam]

In the beginning was the word.

And the word was, "Whh!Whh! Is this thing on?"

 

[Meffy]

Then came "the big TAP-TAP-TAP," as we audio cosmologists like to call it.

 

[Morrigan]

For once, the French words are better (usually technical terms are much better in English, and I still prefer them but etymologically the French ones make more sense).
Hardware = matériel (informatique): etymologically it's "(computer) physical matter"
Software = logiciel: etymologically it's "(computer) logical component"

...I really should have studied linguistics.

 

[Ladewig]

If you think you know what software is -- as compared with hardware (and where firmware fits in), then what is the "softest of software"?

Vaporware? I once worked for a company that sold that.

Wetware? Once you get past the cruchy shell, it is surprisingly soft and mushy.

 

[Morrigan]

Vaporware? I once worked for a company that sold that.

You worked for 3D Realms?

 

[politas]

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.

How about a set of instructions controlling a virtual robot running in a Java applet on a web browser running under a virtualised instance of an operating system which is itself being run on emulated hardware?