App vs Program

[midnight]

Is there a difference and if so, what is it??

[BruceR]

Not really much difference. The term App can sometimes be used specifically referring to mobile applications, but can also be applied to almost any application software program.

"With the spread of smartphones and tablet computers around 2010, the short form "app" was in some popular news accounts restricted to mobile apps."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applica...re#Terminology

Bruce

[midnight]

Thanks Bruce, that was my thinking but wondered if I was over-simplifying.

[cafed00d]

I usually equate "program" with a running executable - something that you can see in task manager. A program might consist of an .exe file and multiple DLLs. (Though a Java "program" tends to deviate from that somewhat due to the way Java behaves. I have always said that there is no such thing as a Java program... Yes, I would be happy to explain that remark if you care to know)

An "application" on the other hand might consist of multiple programs that all work together to provide a feature. An example would be an application that installs several services and has several .exe files, each of which provide different or complimentary capabilities. For example, word.exe is a program, while Office is an application. Of course there is nothing to prevent a program from being an application, that is, an application can consist of only one program. There are numerous examples of this.

The term "app" is usually a shortened form of "application", and thus can refer to the same thing (I always use app instead of application because it is easier to type). That was until smart phones came around and suddenly "app" designated something that ran on a smart phone. But even then it might consist of multiple parts working together to provide a set of functionality.

[CLiNT]

Is there a difference and if so, what is it??

When it comes to Windows there is virtually no difference between the two.