The ends are of various size and come in male and female variety. You should choose your cable system carefully and keep in mind that most government laws prohibit discrimination on basis of gender. Male or female must be chosen without discrimination. Think of hardware as things like hammers and powertools. They are hard, and even after they are broken you can use then for other purposes such as door stops or weight in the back of your pickup truck for traction on the ice.
Software is more like food.
It is good and fun, but eventually is either melts or goes bad and you have to get some more. You can get the free stuff which is usually not much better than weeds or you can pay good money for the good stuff which still doesn't last all that long. This guide will not tell you what specific software you should get, but rather help you understand what kinds of software there are and what functions they perform. Anyway, your computer sends information, chopped up into little tiny packets, and whistles them on the phone to other computers that hear the whistles and based on the wonderful tunes they hear, rebuild the information packet by packet into your same reconstituted information. This sounds sort of like a cross between a Star Trek transporter beam and the post-office.