Software and Software Crisis

Software

is a general term for the various kinds of programs used to operate computers and related devices.Software can be thought of as the variable part of a computer and hardware the invariable part. Software is a collection of data or instructions that tells the computer how to work. In contrast to hardware which is physical component, from which the system is built and actually performs the work. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all information processed by computer systems, programs and data. Computer hardware and software require each other. They are interrelated among each other  and neither can be realistically used on its own. Software is often divided into application software (programs that do work users are directly interested in) and system software (which includes operating systems and any program that supports application software). The term middleware is sometimes used to describe programming that mediates between application and system software or between two different kinds of application software (for example, sending a remote work request from an application in a computer that has one kind of operating system to an application in a computer with a different operating system). When the first applications of computers in business were introduced in the early 1950s, software was less important (and less costly) in computer systems. Today, software comprises a much larger percentage of the cost of modern computer systems.

Software Crisis

Software crisis is a term used in the early days in the field of computing science and technology for the difficulty of writing effective, useful and efficient computer programs and applications in the required time. The software crisis was due to the rapid increases in computer power and the complexity of the problems that could not be tackled in predetermined time and budget. The causes of the software crisis is linked to the complexity of hardware and the software development process and software development life cycle. With the increase in the complexity of the software, many software problems arose because existing methods were insufficient.

• No software applications are fast enough to keep up with rapidly changing business conditions and rapidly evolving technologies in the modern world.

• Not only must new applications and computer programs be developed quickly, but existing software programs and applications  must also be maintained 

• Increasing complexity, leads to the increased potential for ”bugs”.  Software bug is an error, failure or fault in a computer program, system or developed application that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways out of the range of it's purpose. The process of fixing the bugs is called debugging. 

• Testing and ”Debugging” software is expensive and time-consuming in the rapidly developing software and IT industry.

 Software Fundamentals

• Computer programs:

   Sequences of instructions for the computer.

• Programming:

  Process of writing (or coding) program codes.

• Programmers:

  Individuals who are involved in coding, developing and perform programming.

• Stored program concept:

   In this concept stored programs are accessed and their instructions are executed in the computer’s       CPU.

Related: Output Technologies
               Input Technologies
               Computer Memory and Types of Memory
               Working of CPU