Difference between hardware and software | hardware | software

Difference between hardware & software

Software is engineered, it is not manufactured. There are some similarities between software development and hardware manufacturing; the two activities are fundamentally different. In software and hardware high quality is achieved through good design, but in the manufacturing phase for hardware can introduce quality problems that are non existent.

Hardware manufacturing & software developing activities are depending on peoples but the relationship between people and work accomplished is entirely different.

Both actions needs the construction of a product but the approaches are different.

Software

• Software costs are concentrated on engineering of software. Its means that s/w projects can't be managed as if as they were manufacturing projects.

• Software is not affected by the environmental problems. Undiscovered defects will cause high failure rates early in the life of program. These are corrected through testing process. Software does not exhaust.

• Every software indicate an error in design or in the process through which design are translated into machine executable code.

• The maintenance of s/w is very complex.

Hardware

• The relationship often called the “bathtub curve” indicates that hardware exhibits relatively high failure rate. Defects are corrected and failure reduced for some period of time. As time passes, the failure arises again due to temperature extremes, dust and due to many other environmental problems. The hardware begins to wear out.

• When a hardware component exhaust, it is replaced by another spare part. There are no spare parts for software. The maintenance of hardware is easy.