can you think of some opposites happy and sad on and off how about hardware and software well they aren't exactly opposites but hardware and software are pretty different from each other you already learned about Hardware all of the parts of the computer that you can see and touch like the monitor Mouse processor and hard drive computers need hardware for you to interact with them they also need Hardware to store data provide Power and do many other jobs Hardware can also be found on other devices like smartphones game consoles and televisions but in order to do all of the awesome things that computers and other devices do they also need software software can't be touched like Hardware because it's made up of the programs on the computer that let us tell the computer what to do software is what makes computers work and what makes them so much fun because there are programs to do just about anything you can dream of a program is a set of instructions that tell a computer what to do there are two main types of software system software and application Software System software manages the computer itself while application software is made for you to use these applications or apps for short usually perform a specific task like word processing surfing the web or even playing games you're watching this video using an application right now software takes your input and turns it into something your device can understand now you know the difference between hardware and software Hardware is the physical parts of the computer that you can see and touch while software is the files programs and applications on a computer how about one last set of opposites before we go appear and vanish