computing for the formal concept of computation see computation not to be confused with the magazine or the scientific journal computer technology redirects here for the company see computer technology limited a difference engine computing the solution to a polynomial function computer laboratory moody hall james madison university 2003 a rack of servers from 2006 computing is any activity that uses computers it includes developing hardware and software and using computers to manage and process information communicate and entertain computing is a critically important integral component of modern industrial technology major computing disciplines include computer engineering software engineering computer science information systems and information technology definitions the acm computing curricula 2005 defined computing as follows in a general way we can define computing to mean any goaloriented activity requiring benefiting from or creating computers thus computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes processing structuring and managing various kinds of information doing scientific studies using computers making computer systems behave intelligently creating and using communications and entertainment media finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose and so on the list is virtually endless and the possibilities are vast and it defines five subdisciplines of the computing field computer science computer engineering information systems information technology and software engineering however computing curricula 2005 also recognizes that the meaning of computing depends on the context computing also has other meanings that are more specific based on the context in which the term is used for example an information systems specialist will view computing somewhat differently from a software engineer regardless of the context doing computing well can be complicated and difficult because society needs people to do computing well we must think of computing not only as a profession but also as a discipline the term computing has sometimes been narrowly defined as in a 1989 acm report on computing as a discipline the discipline of computing is the systematic study of algorithmic processes that describe and transform information their theory analysis design efficiency implementation and application the fundamental question underlying all computing is what can be efficiently automated the term computing is also synonymous with counting and calculating in earlier times it was used in reference to the action performed by mechanical computing machines and before that to human computers history history of computing and timeline of computing the history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate with or without the aid of tables computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers but long before abstractions like the number arose there were mathematical concepts to serve the purposes of civilization these concepts include onetoone correspondence the basis of counting comparison to a standard used for measurement and the 345 right triangle a device for assuring a right angle the earliest known tool for use in computation was the abacus and it was thought to have been invented in babylon circa 2400 bc its original style of usage was by lines drawn in sand with pebbles abaci of a more modern design are still used as calculation tools today this was the first known calculation aid preceding greek methods by 2000 years the first recorded idea of using digital electronics for computing was the 1931 paper the use of thyratrons for high speed automatic counting of physical phenomena by c e wynnwilliams claude shannons 1938 paper a symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits then introduced the idea of using electronics for boolean algebraic operations computer computer outline of computers and glossary of computer terms a computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions called a computer program the program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions the same program in its humanreadable source code form enables a programmer to study and develop a sequence of steps known as an algorithm because the instructions can be carried out in different types of computers a single set of source instructions converts to machine instructions according to the central processing unit type the execution process carries out the instructions in a computer program instructions express the computations performed by the computer they trigger sequences of simple actions on the executing machine those actions produce effects according to the semantics of the instructions computer software and hardware software and computer hardware computer software or just software is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it software refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of the computer for some purposes in other words software is a set of programs procedures algorithms and its documentation concerned with the operation of a data processing system program software performs the function of the program it implements either by directly providing instructions to the computer hardware or by serving as input to another piece of software the term was coined to contrast with the old term hardware meaning physical devices in contrast to hardware software is intangible software is also sometimes used in a more narrow sense meaning application software only application software application software application software also known as an application or an app is a computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks examples include enterprise software accounting software office suites graphics software and media players many application programs deal principally with documents apps may be bundled with the computer and its system software or may be published separately some users are satisfied with the bundled apps and need never install one application software is contrasted with system software and middleware which manage and integrate a computers capabilities but typically do not directly apply them in the performance of tasks that benefit the user the system software serves the application which in turn serves the user application software applies the power of a particular computing platform or system software to a particular purpose some apps such as microsoft office are available in versions for several different platforms others have narrower requirements and are thus called for example a geography application for windows or an android application for education or linux gaming sometimes a new and popular application arises that only runs on one platform increasing the desirability of that platform this is called a killer application system software system software system software or systems software is computer software designed to operate and control the computer hardware and to provide a platform for running application software system software includes operating systems utility software device drivers window systems and firmware frequently development tools such as compilers linkers and debuggers are classified as system software computer network computer network a computer network often simply referred to as a network is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information where at least one process in one device is able to sendreceive data tofrom at least one process residing in a remote device then the two devices are said to be in a network networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics such as the medium used to transport the data communications protocol used scale topology and organizational scope communications protocols define the rules and data formats for exchanging information in a computer network and provide the basis for network programming wellknown communications protocols are ethernet a hardware and link layer standard that is ubiquitous in local area networks and the internet protocol suite which defines a set of protocols for internetworking ie for data communication between multiple networks as well as hosttohost data transfer and applicationspecific data transmission formats computer networking is sometimes considered a subdiscipline of electrical engineering telecommunications computer science information technology or computer engineering since it relies upon the theoretical and practical application of these disciplines internet the internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard internet protocol suite tcpip to serve billions of users that consists of millions of private public academic business and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic wireless and optical networking technologies the internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services such as the interlinked hypertext documents of the world wide web www and the infrastructure to support email computer programming computer programming and software engineering computer programming in general is the process of writing testing debugging and maintaining the source code and documentation of computer programs this source code is written in a programming language which is an artificial language often more restrictive or demanding than natural languages but easily translated by the computer the purpose of programming is to invoke the desired behavior customization from the machine the process of writing high quality source code requires knowledge of both the applications domain and the computer science domain the highestquality software is thus developed by a team of various domain experts each person a specialist in some area of development but the term programmer may apply to a range of program quality from hacker to open source contributor to professional and a single programmer could do most or all of the computer programming needed to generate the proof of concept to launch a new killer application computer programmer programmer software engineer and software developer a programmer computer programmer or coder is a person who writes computer software the term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software one who practices or professes a formal approach to programming may also be known as a programmer analyst a programmers primary computer language c c java lisp python etc is often prefixed to the above titles and those who work in a web environment often prefix their titles with web the term programmer can be used to refer to a software developer software engineer computer scientist or software analyst however members of these professions typically possess other software engineering skills beyond programming computer industry computer industry the computer industry is made up of all of the businesses involved in developing computer software designing computer hardware and computer networking infrastructures the manufacture of computer components and the provision of information technology services including system administration and maintenance software industry software industry the software industry includes businesses engaged in development maintenance and publication of software the industry also includes software services such as training documentation and consulting subdisciplines of computing computer engineering computer engineering computer engineering is a discipline that integrates several fields of electrical engineering and computer science required to develop computer hardware and software software engineering software engineering software engineering se is the application of a systematic disciplined quantifiable approach to the design development operation and maintenance of software and the study of these approaches that is the application of engineering to software computer science computer science and computer scientist computer science or computing science abbreviated cs or comp sci is the scientific and practical approach to computation and its applications a computer scientist specializes in the theory of computation and the design of computational systems its subfields can be divided into practical techniques for its implementation and application in computer systems and purely theoretical areas some such as computational complexity theory which studies fundamental properties of computational problems are highly abstract while others such as computer graphics emphasize realworld applications still others focus on the challenges in implementing computations for example programming language theory studies approaches to description of computations while the study of computer programming itself investigates various aspects of the use of programming languages and complex systems and humancomputer interaction focuses on the challenges in making computers and computations useful usable and universally accessible to humans information systems information systems information systems is is the study of complementary networks of hardware and software see information technology that people and organizations use to collect filter process create and distribute data the acms computing careers website says a majority of is the study bridges business and computer science using the theoretical foundations of information and computation to study various business models and related algorithmic processes within a computer science discipline computer information systems cis this field studies computers and algorithmic processes including their principles their software and hardware designs their applications and their impact on society information technology information technology information technology it is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store retrieve transmit and manipulate data systems administration system administrator a system administrator it systems administrator systems administrator or sysadmin is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system or network the duties of a system administrator are wideranging and may vary substantially from one organization to another sysadmins are usually charged with installing supporting and maintaining servers or other computer systems and planning for and responding to service outages and other problems other duties may include scripting or light programming project management for systemsrelated projects supervising or training computer operators and being the consultant for computer problems beyond the knowledge of technical support staff research and emerging technologies further information list of unsolved problems in computer science dnabased computing and quantum computing are areas of active research in both hardware and software such as the development of quantum algorithms potential infrastructure for future technologies includes dna origami on photolithography fiberoptic and photonic optical devices which already have been used to transport data over long distances have started being used by data centers side by side with cpu and semiconductor memory components this allows the separation of ram from cpu by optical interconnects computing portal computer science portal index of history of computing articles list of computer term etymologies scientific computing electronic data processing creative computing computingat wikipedias sister projects definitions from wiktionary media from wikimedia commons textbooks from wikibooks resources from wikiversity foldoc the free online dictionary of computing openaccess repository of publications department of computing imperial college london vtemajor fields of computer sciencenote this template roughly follows the 2012 acm computing classification systemhardware printed circuit board peripheral integrated circuit very large scale integration systems on chip socs energy consumption green computing electronic design automation hardware acceleration computer systemsorganization computer architecture embedded system realtime computing dependability networks network architecture network protocol network components network scheduler network performance evaluation network service software organization interpreter middleware virtual machine operating system software quality software notationsand tools programming paradigm programming language compiler domainspecific language modeling language software framework integrated development environment software configuration management software library software repository software development software development process requirements analysis software design software construction software deployment software maintenance programming team opensource model theory of computation model of computation formal language automata theory computational complexity theory logic semantics algorithms algorithm design analysis of algorithms algorithmic efficiency randomized algorithm computational geometry mathematicsof computing discrete mathematics probability statistics mathematical software information theory mathematical analysis numerical analysis informationsystems database management system information storage systems enterprise information system social information systems geographic information system decision support system process control system multimedia information system data mining digital library computing platform digital marketing world wide web information retrieval security cryptography formal methods security services intrusion detection system hardware security network security information security application security humancomputerinteraction interaction design social computing ubiquitous computing visualization accessibility concurrency concurrent computing parallel computing distributed computing multithreading multiprocessing artificialintelligence natural language processing knowledge representation and reasoning computer vision automated planning and scheduling search methodology control method philosophy of artificial intelligence distributed artificial intelligence machine learning supervised learning unsupervised learning reinforcement learning multitask learning crossvalidation graphics animation rendering image manipulation graphics processing unit mixed reality virtual reality image compression solid modeling appliedcomputing ecommerce enterprise software computational mathematics computational physics computational chemistry computational biology computational social science computational engineering computational healthcare digital art electronic publishing cyberwarfare electronic voting video games word processing operations research educational technology document management book category portal wikiproject commons 