Hardware/Software: Working with Information on the Computer

In order to get information in to or out of a computer, you need computer hardware and software.

Hardware - the physical components
Computer "hardware" refers to the parts of the computer that you can see and touch (although you shouldn't touch the interior components without proper safety precautions).You could think of the hardware as the ingredients you need to bake a cake, and the software as the recipe that tells you how to put the ingredients together. Hardware is discussed in the section called Based on Design. For now we'll concentrate on software.

Software
Software is simply a set of instructions that tell the hardware what to do. It is written in a language that computers understand. Where the "letters" are simply the binary 1's and 0's that make up the individual instructions which form the software programs stored on storage devices either internally or externally.

Previous Page Next Page
 




These pages were written by Steven H. VanderLeest and Jeffrey Nyhoff and edited by Nancy Zylstra
©2005 Calvin College, All Rights Reserved

If you encounter technical errors, contact rit@calvin.edu.