How do a computer’s hardware and software actually connect?
In: Technology
Hardware is the physical machinery your computer is made of. Your computer is made of a bunch of different hardware components which all have their own jobs, like performing calculations, storing data or retrieving data. The quality that makes computers cool though is that they are programmable, meaning you can customize how they work.
There are other machines which are programmable, such as mechanical looms. The loom can be configured to weave different patterns into the fabric. A machine doesn’t have to be electronic to be programmed. A program, in its simplest sense, is just a particular configuration of the parts in a machine which makes it behave a certain way.
However, computers take this a step further, clearly, and writing programs for computers has become so complex that we created a new term for it: software.
So, in short, you can think of the hardware as the physical stuff that the computer is made of, and the software as the configured state of that physical stuff that allows the computer to behave the way you want.
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