Ask this question to ten different people and you will probably get ten different answers! This is because the world of technology has expanded from a single personal desktop computer to tablet pcs and smart phones.

Most people however, are content if their app or program (or whatever!) works on the device they prefer to use. If you are looking at a programming career however, then this difference may be significant.

Even if you are a layman, you will probably need to purchase software at some point. If so, it may be interesting to know the difference between a program and an application.

What is a Program?

A program is a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do. It is written in a language that a computer (or computing device) understands.

Actually a computer understands nothing but electric pulses – ON and OFF. These signals are represented by 0 and 1. A programmer codes his programs in a programming language and there are other programs that translate this code into machine language – the 0s and 1s.

There are several programming languages from the age old PASCAL and COBOL to the more recent ones like JQuery, DotNet, and PHP.

What is an App?

Simply put, an application is a program written for a specific purpose. For example the app that you may download to logon to Facebook from your mobile phone, is written specifically for the purpose of allowing you to log on to FB and navigate the site.

Apps are short for applications. They are written for specific purposes either at the request of the user or for commercial use.

So What’s the Difference?

Says Warren Tang, “programs and apps are the same thing”. Conventionally however, software like the operating system, which directly talks to the computer, is called a program while software that talks to the user is called an app. For example you would not call Windows an Application nor would you call Whatsapp a program.

Ultimately, the difference between an application and a program is in the perception of the user. A program would require a number of files to be installed whereas an application seems like a single file that gets installed on your device, though in fact it may be a number of files.

An application would have a single icon and can be easily uninstalled whereas uninstalling a program would require another program called the uninstaller which would go and delete all the files you saved while installing the program.

A program may become an app on another device. In the earlier Facebook example, on your computer you do not need to install anything to logon to Facebook whereas on your mobile device you need an app.

This is because of the difference in the way browsers run on mobile devices and computers.

So what do you think? Are apps just another way of calling a program?