Taming the tiger: software engineering and software economics
Taming the tiger: software engineering and software economics
Software perspectives: the system is the message
Software perspectives: the system is the message
Mirror worlds or the day software puts the universe in a shoebox: how will it happen and what it will mean
Component software: beyond object-oriented programming
Component software: beyond object-oriented programming
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Very early in the development of computers, people referred to the actual physical components--the tubes and relays, the resistors and wires, and chassis--as computer hardware. The word software was then coined to describe the non-hardware components of the computer, in particular the programs that were needed to make the computers perform their intended tasks. The word caught on rapidly, and was in quite general use by 1960. One speaks of software shops (i.e. organizations that produce software), software maintenance, and, more recently, software engineering. Actually, software is a very general term that includes many areas discussed elsewhere in this Encyclopedia. The most significant are operating systems, programming languages, and graphical user interfaces (GUIs).