In: Root » Computers and technology » Software
The programs you run to do actual work on your PC are its applications, short for application software, programs with a purpose, programs you apply to get something done. They are the dominant beasts of computing, the top of the food chain. Everything else in your computer system, hardware and software alike, exists merely to make your applications run. Your applications determine what you need in your PC simply because they won't run-or run well-if you don't supply them with what they want. Strange as it may seem, little of the program code in most applications deals with the job for which you buy it. Most of the program revolves around you, trying to make the rigorous requirements of the computer hardware more palatable to your human ideas, aspirations, and whims. The part of the application that serves as the bridge between your human understanding and the computer's needs is called the user interface. It can be anything from a typewritten question mark that demands you type some response to a Technicolor graphic menu luring your mouse to point and click. In fact, the most important job of most modern applications is simply translation. The user interface of the program converts your commands, instructions, and desires into a form digestible by your computer system. At the same time, the user interface reorganizes the data you give your PC into the proper form for its storage or takes data from storage and reorganizes it to suit your requirements, be they stuffing numbers into spreadsheet cells, filling database fields, or moving bits of sound and images to speakers and screen. The user interface acts as an interpreter and translates your actions and responses into digital code. Although the actual work of making this translation is straightforward, even mechanistic (after all, the computer that's doing all the work is a machine), it demands a great deal of computer power. For example, displaying a compressed bitmap that fills a quarter of your screen in a multimedia video involves just a few steps. Your PC need only read a byte from memory, perform a calculation on it, and send it to your monitor. The trick is in the repetition. While you may press only one key to start the operation, your PC has to repeat those simple steps over a million times each second. Such a chore can easily drain the resources available in your PC. That's why you need a powerful PC to run today's video-intensive multimedia applications-and why multimedia didn't catch on until microprocessors with Pentium power caught up with the demands of your software. The actual function of the program, the algorithms that it carries out, are only a small part of its code, typically a tiny fraction. The hardcore computing work performed by major applications-the kind of stuff that the first Univac and other big mainframe computers were created to handle-is amazingly minimal. For example, even a tough statistical analysis may involve but a few lines of calculations (though repeated again and again). Most of what your applications do is simply organize and convert static data from one form to another. Application software often is divided into several broad classes based on what the programs are meant to accomplish. These traditional functions include:
The lines between many of these applications are blurry. For example, many people find that spreadsheets serve all their database needs, and most spreadsheets now incorporate their own graphics for charting results. Several software publishers completely confound the distinctions by combining most of these applications functions into a single package that includes a database, graphics, spreadsheet, and word processing. These combinations are termed application suites. Ideally, they offer several advantages. Because many functions (and particularly the user interface) are shared between applications, large portions of code need not be duplicated as would be the case with stand-alone applications. Because the programs work together, they better know and understand one another's resource requirements, which means you should encounter fewer conflicts and memory shortfalls. Because they are all packaged together, you stand to get a better price from the publisher. Although application suites have vastly improved since their early years, they sometimes show their old weaknesses. Even the best sometimes falls short of the ideal, comprised of parts that don't perfectly mesh together, created by different design teams over long periods. Even the savings can be elusive because you may end up buying several applications you rarely use among the ones you want. Nevertheless, suites like Microsoft Office have become popular because they are single-box solutions that fill the needs of most people, handling more tasks with more depth than they ordinarily need. In other words, the suite is an easy way to ensure you'll have the software you need for almost anything you do.
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