We have already learned that computer software is another term for computer programs.
Operating Systems are the software that manages the use of the computer hardware and gives the user access to files and all other programs available. Operating systems are essential - without one on your computer, you would not be able to do anything! We will describe the powerful features of operating systems in much more detail in a later lecture.
Applications software is the category that most software you have heard of probably fits into. This includes software for wordprocessing, spreadsheets, databases, communications, and graphics. You will have the opportunity to learn wordprocessing, spreadsheets, and communications applications in the labs in this course.
Through the operating system, the user can access Application Programs. Applications come in several different broad categories, five of which are most common in today's personal computers:
Common examples of Word processors include Word Perfect and Microsoft Word. You will use Microsoft Word in labs 2 and 3.
Common Spreadsheet packages include Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel. You will use Excel in labs 4 and 5.
Communication and networking packages for DOS/Windows machines include Vterm, PC Talk, Ewan Telnet, the WWW browser Lynx, and many others. Under Windows, graphical WWW browsers like Netscape and Mosaic are available.
Common graphics packages include Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Windows Draw, and Harvard Graphics. Most graphics packages are also available on Macintosh systems.
Well-known Database packages include dBASE, Microsoft Access, and Paradox, but there are a great many others.
Educational software is available for many different levels of learners - from infants up through college graduates. Some of this can be found in the self-paced learning laboratories operated by Information Technology on campus. Feel free to take advantage of them to learn about software and other areas of interest.
Entertainment software is a popular category. Some entertainment software is also educational. We will not go in to further detail about games in this course.
Utilities is a category of software that can improve your use of computers, but they don't produce information like word processing or spreadsheet software does. Examples of utility programs are anti-virus programs, disk optimization software, and many other areas.
Programming languages allow users to create new programs to execute on computers. We will spend the last 4 laboratory sessions in this course creating programs in a friendly and powerful programming language called Scheme (other sections of this course have used MUMPS as the programming language).
A computer program is an exact, step-by-step set of instructions for completing a task written in a programming language.
There are three levels of computer programming languages - machine language, assembly language, and high-level languages. We will see examples of commands in languages at each level later on in the quarter.
High-level languages are the most commonly used for creating programs because they are the easiest and most efficient to write in. A large number of High-Level Languages exist. These languages allow users like yourself to develop your own, customized software. The programming languages used in ECS15 are MUMPS or Scheme. These programming languages are easy to learn and especially powerful for handling text-related problems with a computer. We will also describe other computer languages and contrast their capabilities in more detail towards the end of this course.
We will see more about intelligent software during the discussion of artificial intelligence later in the quarter.
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lectures for ECS15 - Fall 1997 .
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