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What's a process where you prefer the old way of doing things instead of how it's done now?
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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It grinds my gears that programs are called 'apps' now. On phones it was normalized immediately, so, sure. Computers run programs, though, god dammit.
Program is such a funny word when you remember it's an analogy from radio and TV. Radio and TV are just delivery mechanisms for programs, which are the content and point of the medium.
You could define a podcast as an internet-delivered audio program.
In the UK, "programme" is used for events, TV shows, and schedules, while "program" is specifically used in computing contexts.
Microsoft have been calling discrete computer programs "applications" since at least the Windows 95 era, when Program Manager was replaced with the start menu. They've been inconsistently kinda-sorta doing so since even Windows 3.x, maybe even more, but nobody was closely paying attention back then.
It didn't become the current situation of monkey-see-monkey-do until Apple started using the terminology heavily with the iPhone, as you have observed. But they actually cribbed it from good old M$, much as they've cribbed basically everything else they've done in the modern era from someone else and simply painted it glossy white.
I feel this.
Why? What is the functional difference between an application and a program?
The term was changed to application when Win 95 came out. An application runs over the API (Application Programming Interface) in Windows, whereas a program in MS-DOS ran straight off the motherboard.
Outside of Unix based programs, probably not a lot.
In terms of their functionality most programs are standalone applications rather than tools where you modify the programming flow of the data.