SOFTWARE
Software , instructions that tell a computer what to do. Software comprises the entire set of programs, procedures, and routines associated with the operation of a computer system . The term was coined to differentiate these instructions from hardware such as the physical components of a computer system. A set of instructions that directs a computer’s hardware to perform a task is called a program, or software program. In 2000, Fred Shapiro, a librarian at the Yale Law School, published a letter revealing that John Wilder Tukey's 1958 paper "The Teaching of Concrete Mathematics" contained the earliest known usage of the term "software" found in a search of JSTOR's electronic archives, predating the OED's citation by two years. This led many to credit Tukey with coining the term, particularly in obituaries published that same year, although Tukey ...