Computer program: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 02:17, 6 April 2002

Revision as of 15:20, 6 August 2002

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A '''computer program''' tells a [[computer]] what the computer should do. A '[[program]]'It is a series of instructions to be executed in order. A computer program consists of a set of instructions that the computer understands.

A computer without a program does absolutely nothing.

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The instructions in a computer program are in [[machine code]]; they are usually originally written in a computer [[programming language]], and translated to machine code using a computer program called a [[compiler]]. Sometimes the programming language is simply a set of abbreviations for the machine code instructions, called [[assembly language]] -- in this case, a program called an [[assembler]] is used to make the translation.

It is sometimes used as a synonym for "[[computer software|software]]"; although the main part of any software is programs, software also often includes resource files that contain [[data]] of some kind; these are not part of the program per se. An abstract program is sometimes called an [[algorithm]].

Computer programs are now also the subject of [[mathematics]] - for example,