A printer puts information onto paper. Finally, computers need software. Software or computer programs are lists of instructions written by a person that tell a computer what to do. Software is stored as a set of electromagnetic code signals in the computer's memory, on a disk or microchip. Software and hardware designed to send and receive data allow computers to share information with other computers and people around the world.
Modems translate computerized data into signals that travel through phone lines.
Computer modeling explores the logical consequences of a set of instructions and a set of data. The instructions and data input of a computer model try to represent the real world. Human computer programmers strive to translate human language into a code that a machine can recognize and understand. Successful programming requires that a task be broken down into steps that can be understood not only by the computer, but also by other programmers. This set of steps is called an algorithm.