
In October 1953, I coined the word 'software' (1995) - rabidrat
http://www.niquette.com/books/softword/part0.htm
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weitzj
I had this moment recently....

What’s between hardware and software?

Firmware

Hard - Firm - Soft

Maybe I never saw it since I am not a native English speaker. But better late
than never

Like:

Heavy Metal - Metal - HardRock - Soft Rock

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ktpsns
Can somebody explain this word juggling for a non-native speaker? Wikipedia in
my mother tongue explains "firm" coming from "solid/tight/strong"
([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware)).

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pubby
"Firm" describes a mattress. Sleeping on the ground is hard. Sleeping on a
pillow is soft. Sleeping on a mattress is firm.

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D-Coder
This quote from Niquette's web site, "proving" that English has about 38,000
words, does not impress me:

> I took down from my shelf The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
> Language, which is not the OED but one I happen to like a whole lot. Now,
> there are 1,491 pages with definitions on them. I did a quick count of the
> words defined on a couple of randomly selected pages and got an estimate of
> 25.5 words. You can do the indicated arithmetic, of course, but I'll save
> you the trouble: 1,491 times 25.5 equals 38,020 words.

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dctoedt
Did he claim it was a _proof_ , or an order-of-magnitude _estimate_ — in the
same category as the job-interview question "how many gas stations are there
in the United States?"

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bullen
I use hard/soft naming for persistent/transient (disk/RAM) data in my
database, I find that analogy works there too.

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reaperducer
We have hardware, firmware, software, wetware, what other *wares are there?

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timbit42
Sub-types of software: shareware, trialware, freeware, payware, bloatware

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lioeters
..vaporware

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luizfzs
malware

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zerr
What about 'hardware'?

