Difference between Software and Program: If we talk about our daily uses, then software and program can be used interchangeably. But there is a huge difference in between software and program in technical language.
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As software is a collection of programs and data files that are designed to perform some operations and on the other hand, program is a set of instructions that perform only a specific task that it is made for. In this article, we will discuss the basic difference between Software and Program in tabular format to make it easily understandable.
| S. No. | Software | Program |
| 1 | The software is a broad term which is designed to perform some specific set of operations. | A program is set of instructions which perform only a specific type of task. |
| 2 | A software consists of bundles of programs and data files. Programs in a specific software use these data files to perform a dedicated type of tasks. | A program consists of a set of instructions which are coded in a programming language like C, C++, PHP, Java etc. |
| 3 | A software can be classified into two categories: application software and system software. | A program cannot be classified into various categories. |
| 4 | An application software comes in wide range of varieties like a text editor, media player, web browser, video player, video editor, image editor. Different types of application software provide a different type of services.
A system software acts as an interface between hardware and an application software. Whenever a user wants to do a specific job, he gives commands to application software. These commands are delivered to application software via system software. All of the system software provide same kind of services. An operating system is a type of system software. |
Source code in a program is written for small jobs. |
| 5 | Examples of “application software” are: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Google Chrome, VLC media player, Firefox, Adobe Reader etc.
Examples of “system software” are: Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac etc. |
Program showing whether a given number is even or odd, program to find factorial of a number, program to find greatest of all given numbers, program to check whether a given number is palindrome or not; are few examples of the program. |
| 6 | A software is developed by either a single programmer or a group of programmers but it is developed for a naïve user. | A program is developed and also used by either a single programmer or a group of programmers. |
| 7 | Every software has a dedicated user interface. The user interface of a software may be in the form of command prompt or in a graphical format. | Programs don’t have a user interface. |
| 8 | Software development life cycle (SDLC) is used to develop every software. | SDLC is not used to make programs. |
| 9 | A software is not compiled when we give it commands to perform specific operations. However, a whole software is compiled, tested and debugged in the development process. | A program is compiled every time when we need to generate some output from it. |
So it was all about Difference between Software and Program. If you have doubt then please comment below or add more difference between program and software.
