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Since the boom of the computer generation in the late 70s and early 80s, the machines have quickly gone from being just an oddity to a near necessity for the common person. A market that started out as large machines capable of doing very little has grown exponentially, infecting and affecting every aspect of our lives. Watches, handheld phones and devices, even broadcasting video and audio from our laptops to our televisions--all these fantastic advances have come about thanks to the computer industry and its wealth of hardware and software jobs in Denver and the Silicon Valley. Most of us may have started out on the earliest Macintoshes, playing computer games like Oregon Trail or any of the other hundreds of educational games made Since the boom of the computer generation in the late 70s and early 80s, the machines have quickly gone from being just an oddity to a near necessity for the common person. A market that started out as large machines capable of doing very little has grown exponentially, infecting and affecting every aspect of our lives. Watches, handheld phones and devices, even broadcasting video and audio from our laptops to our televisions--all these fantastic advances have come about thanks to the computer industry and its wealth of hardware and software jobs in Denver and the Silicon Valley. Most of us may have started out on the earliest Macintoshes, playing computer games like Oregon Trail or any of the other hundreds of educational games made available to schools across the country. Many of us had no idea at the potential for the computing industry: what it was capable of achieving, in what ways, or how quickly it’s happened over the last thirty years. What we witnessed as younger versions of ourselves was the blending of hardware and software into one complete whole that would change our lives forever after. Many people, however, don’t know the difference between hardware and software, the important yin and yang of the computer industry. In some ways, the terms are obvious and intuitive, more so when they’re explained. Hardware can be described as simply the hard, physical aspects of any computing machine. This includes everything on the outside of your computer like your mouse, the keyboard, your screen (or screens) and the hard drive (or computer tower) that contains all the components that make your computer run. All of these components require software to work in its most efficient manner (depending on the type of software being used), and the software requires many of these pieces of hardware to work efficiently. Software, on the other hand, is composed of all the intangible code that helps make a computer system, or games for that system, run. Software is written by software engineers who type up particular strings of code for a particular system. The software needed to run on Apple products may be significantly different than the code written for products used on what are commonly known as PCs, or personal computers. There are, of course, similarities, but the reason Microsoft and Apple are two of the giants in the industry is because of their own special touches on the hardware/software combination setting them apart from each other. The hardware and the software don’t work alone, though. They work completely in tandem. In fact, all software requires at least one piece of hardware to help it be efficient at its job. A video game, for instance, needs to use several pieces of hardware in order to work properly: the computer processor, the RAM (or memory), a video card (to help translate the code into a visual display on your monitor), and the hard drive. If a game has sounds programmed into its code too, then a sound card (hardware) is necessary for that video game (software) to play through your computer’s speakers (hardware). As the computing industry continues to expand and explode in myriad ways, it’s important for people going into the industry to know and understand these nuanced, but important differences that computers rely on to run correctly and efficiently. Without the know-how of the hardware producers, the software engineers have nothing to run their software on. Without the knowledge and programming skills of the software engineers, the hardware sits unused and worthless. So if you’re one of those looking for software jobs in Denver, knowing both sides of the hardware/software discussion is key in being successful in the industry and will continue to be so for a very long, long time.
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