Besides the baseline differences, there are a few extra distinctions that differentiate programs from software on the practical level. For one, since a program is only intended to do one thing, they’re relatively easy to create and can be handled by a single developer. Software, on the other hand, is much more complex and usually requires a full team of developers to create the individual programs and stitch them all together.
Additionally, programs are typically smaller in size than software due to their lack of complexity. A single program may only take up a handful of kilobytes on your hard drive storage, whereas a piece of software could take up megabytes or gigabytes of space due to how many processes they need to run simultaneously and the data required to run those processes or programs.
Finally, individual programs don’t usually have their own user interfaces; rather, they usually piggyback off your operating system’s display framework to show simple buttons and windows. On the other hand, software has wholly unique user interfaces, compartmentalizing buttons, and functions for users. The main menu in your favorite video game looks like that because the developers deliberately engineered it that way, while Windows Defender virus scan is a program in your Windows settings and doesn’t need its own custom UI.
