How software is built: Coding, scripting, and programming

Video games, music players, and Internet browsers are all different types of software that have completely different functions. Think of the apps on your phone and your laptop. We spent a lot of time interacting with this type of software, but we may not know how it actually works or gets added to our systems. In the last few videos, we learned about networking in the internet. There are tons of applications out there that require the Internet to work. Think about it. Your social media apps, messaging apps, and others run off the Internet. This Internet integration isn't just magically added to your application, it's built-in to require it to function. Before we go too far into the world of software, I want to call out some common terms related to software that you might hear. Coding, scripting, and programming are all terms that might seem a little blurry. They generally refer to the same thing, but they each have small distinctions. Coding is basically translating one language to another. This can be coding from English to Spanish, English to Morse code, or even English to a computer language. When someone builds an application, we refer to it as coding in application. Scripting is coding in a scripting language. We'll talk about scripting languages in a later lesson, but scripts are mainly used to perform a single or limited-range task. There are languages we can use to build these. Programming is coding in a programming language. Programming languages are special languages that software developers use to write instructions for computers to execute. Larger applications like your web browser, text editors, and music players, are all usually written in programming languages. When we use the term software, it generally refers to something that was programmed. We use these terms interchangeably, so don't sweat the details. Now, onwards and upwards. What is software made of and who builds it? It's a great question. Anyone who knows a programming or scripting language can use it to write code. There's a huge demand for this skill set and it's becoming easier for someone to learn to code. If you're going to be working in IT, it's important that you understand how software works and how it gets installed on your systems. You might encounter software errors or just good old-fashioned failures, and you need to understand how to deal with them.