Firmware.

I'm a high school teacher and I recently was discussing this. Protip: don't talk to 14 year olds about how if something is in between hard and soft, it's firm. 🙄
- There’s a surprisingly more expansive demographic that pro tip applies to.
  
  Tip
  Hehe
  
  I'm 41f (going on 13 at times), and this is why my husband hates(loves) having me around the shop - all the mechanical everything is full of euphemisms and innuendo. "mating surfaces" 😂
  
  Are emojis acceptable here? Because I’d like to insert the hand raise one here
  
  Yeah, that tip is applicable for a lot of people who understand what sex is, this isn't something that really goes away with age in a lot of cases.
- I feel like you should really have seen that one coming.
  
  coming for sure
- Whiskey-ware
  
  This guy doesn’t fuck.
- Half-chubware
- I had a physics teacher who measured something against his hand in front of class and started to say, "You should try to..." then stopped before telling us he almost said "you should try to use your body to measure whenever possible" but stopped because he remembered he was talking to a room full of high schoolers.

Firmware is just software that runs in a different place.
Source: me, I write firmware sometimes at work.
- Well, it's usually closer to the hardware though. Your average x86/64 software dev doesn't have to struggle with pins, addresses, buses and timings that much, if at all.
  
  Everyones a hardware engineer they just don't want to admit it.
- I''d like to know that where spyware is located?
  
  Windows
- Firmware is just software that runs in a different place.
  Like in the kitchen?
  Jk

Mind? Blown.
- Pants? Shat.
- Hotel? Trivago
  
  Doctor? Zhivago.

Wow. TIL.

Wait... It's not "firm" as in "company that made the stuff"? FIRMware = the official software a firm pushes to patch things they make
- This was my assumption too, but I like this description better.
  
  I'm here like "whynotboth.gif"
  I like it..
- Okay, but now explain Hard and Soft
- I thought exactly the same thing...
- But third party firmware isn't official

By the way, "joystick" was kinda rude back in the day, but nobody even notices now.
- What was more acceptable? "Control stick"?
  
  No, "joystick" was the original term. Everyone in the past were a bunch of perverts.
  
  Disco stick, as in
  "Let's have some fun, this beat is sick / I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."
- what ? why ?
  
  Wikipedia seems to suggest it was an original term, first recorded use in 1909, and mentions nothing about alternative terms or controversy. I call BS

Damn… I always thought it meant the “firm” putting their “ware” on the chips. 😂
- I actually never tried to find any meaning to it. I thought it was just software for the BIOS (which it is), and that's it.
  But this half wat between soft and hard? Whoa.
  
  It's not software for the BIOS, it is the BIOS.
- Same

TIL! I have never even wondered why it is called that. Just took it as a fact and went along with it.

Anyone remember shareware?
- 200+ Shareware games on a CD, played the shit outta those. And they came in magazines or were given out completely free.
  I believe demos for games should still be the norm.
  
  And they arrived (because I don’t want to use ‘came’ given this thread already) on cereal boxes.
  
  I think demos are coming back. I have a bunch on steam recently, and Nintendo has a ton of them on thier storefront.
- I sharewared my firmware and got malware.
  
  I got malware in my wetware and had to change my underwear
- Oh man, Doom. Getting 1/3 of the whole game was incredible. Also Deus Ex years later. Some people hated the Ellis Island level, but I spent so much time exploring everywhere.
  
  doom shareware was a life changer, nothing had been the same since
  
  I fucked around so long that I failed the mission. It gave a prompt that I had 17 minutes left to do the last thing, and ran out by 20 seconds or sth.
  Gotta give that game a whirl again soon, with proper textures & mods & fool around with ReShade for hours until my back hurts and I gotta lay down after an hour of actual gameplay, muhaha.
- The kinkiest of the wares

Then there's wetware (people).
I miss some of the older ones from my college days (1990s).. million logical instructions per second (megalips), and measuring mouse speed in mickeys/pixel.
- With the advent of lab grown animal neurons interfacing with parts, we need to expand the definition of "wetware".
  It's meat. Doesn't even need to be people meat. Just meat that can be trained to react to stimuli, which opens up some options depending on complexity.
  
  So technically, the Pigeon Bomb means wetware predates both software and firmware.
- Of course there's people, the ID-10-T module needs to be installed somewhere!
  
  I thought they required a PEN-15 adapter back then?

Extra firmware cannot be modified.
Firm firmware might be able to be modified, but documentation is largely unknown.
Silken firmware is easily modified by the user.
These names are taken from tofu packaging.
- My favorite is smoked firmware.
  
  Mmm ... Tender ware
  
  This is a common result of firm firmware and tinkering.
- Super firm trust on first use.

My non-tech wife tried to tell me “obviously that’s why it’s called that” when I’ve been writing software (and even some minor firmware hacking) for 30 years.
Is this the real life?
- Is this just fantasy?
  
  Caught in the landslide...

Can someone ELI5 what firmware actually is though? I kind of knew it was half way between, but i don’t know what that looks like.
- Hardware is the physical part of computer.
  Software is the code that runs on the computer to do the thing you want to do.
  Firmware is the code that is installed on the hardware itself, usually in some sort of permanent or semi-permanent memory to make the hardware work.
  
  Oh, that makes sense, thank you!
  
  Can you provide an example for stupid people?
- It's software that lives in the hardware. It provides low-level control and functionality specific to that device. It runs on the hardware itself, not the CPU of the computer.
  For example, a hard drive. We don't want the OS to have to know how to interact with every type of hard drive. Seagate does things differently than Western Digital, an SSD works very different than a hard drive, etc.. The OS sends the same commands to all types of hard drives, but each hard drive needs to know how to actually comply with the commands. If the OS is asking for a dozen different files all over the drive, it would be dumb to try and read them all at the same time. The OS doesn't really know where they are on the spinning disk, but the drive does. Firmware written specifically for the device can do a much better job planing how to fetch the data so the read head doesn't need to go back and forth a bunch of times, but instead make one good pass fetching all the data as it comes to it.
  Hope that helps.
- FIRMware is SOFTware (code) that contains the instructions to run HARDware. In most cases you would experience it, hardware is running an OS (Operating System) which manages all of the firmware ‘packages’. Many electronics, particularly more sophisticated, have firmware that is directly loaded onto the device which has a proprietary OS with limited to no graphical interface.
  I am a layperson so if an expert can weigh in on my take I’d appreciate it!
  
  Firmware doesn't run on an OS, you're probably thinking of drivers which are different. Drivers are software that tell the OS how to interact with specific hardware.
  Firmware is software that's baked into specific hardware components and it exists outside of the OS. A visible example most people are familiar with would be the BIOS which is firmware for the motherboard. Hard drives, graphics cards, RAM, etc all also have their own firmware.
  Other devices such as microwaves, washing machines, cars, or anything using microprocessors (so pretty much everything these days) also have components with their own firmware. It is true that device firmware can drive a UI on some devices such a as a microwave, but most people today wouldn't consider that to be an OS (semantics, I know).
  
  Thank you!

Started computer science in grade school with only an hour of actual computer time a week. A LOT of theory and history. Charles Babbage, Ada, ENIAC, etc.
This stuff was drilled into our heads. Same with bit, byte and, halfway between bit and byte, a nibble. It's a thing. 4 bits is a nibble.
Funny enough, I couldn't code to save my life now.
- Nibbles are still a thing in embedded programming and in ultra low bandwidth comms like LoRa. For example you can pack 2 BCD digits into a byte, one for the high nibble and one for the low nibble. This results in the hex representation of the byte actually being directly readable as the two digits, which is convenient.
  Datasheet for sensors will sometimes reference nibbles as well, often for status bits on protocols like Onewire where every bit counts. i.e low nibble contains a state value 0-15 and high nibble contains individual alarm flags.
  
  Nibbles can also be used with image types that are less than 8-bit
  
  QBasic came with NIBBLES.BAS, a snake game using text-mode characters as "pixels". Specifically it faked a 80x50 "pixel" grid using the standard 80x25 text screen where each 8-bit (=1 byte) text character made up two monochrome pixels using ▄ or ▀ or █ or an empty space.
  I assume the name derived from the fact that, in a way, one pixel was "using half a byte", i. e. a nibble.

oh my god you blew my mind and I also work in IT

I think most people get it intuitively without thinking too much about it.
It's software that is tied to the hardware, in the old days most commonly on ROM, which makes it "firm".
Also as many mention, it's tied to the hardware by the "firm" that made the hardware, although I think that is more accidental, it kind of works for the logic too IMO.
It's such a brilliant term that most people generally have an intuitive idea about what it means, without an actual explanation. Today though it's a bit more murky where the line is drawn between software and firmware, since much firmware is distributed through the OS and Drivers, and can be changed on the fly.

Wow. I've never connected that dot either. Cool!

Rule of thumb: Firmware is essentially software that can break the hardware if something goes wrong.
- I always think of it as software that's saved on the hardware. But I guess technically all software is saved on hardware, but firmware is saved on hardware that's different from the hardware you normally save it on.
  But maybe your definition is better.

I thought this was common knowledge. I distinctly remember this being taught in a basic high school computing class back in the 90’s.
- So in the 90s I had different computer based classes in high school.
  There was a "computers" class, which is probably the closest to what you're talking about, in which we mostly learned how to use Microsoft Works.
  I also was fortunate enough to have some programming classes. We started out with QBasic and then the more advanced level was visual basic.
  None of these discussed firmware. If it came up at all it was probably a casual side conversation because someone bricked something trying to update it.
  
  We started out with QBasic and then the more advanced level was visual basic.
  fun times with gorilla.bas? :)

Like Tofu. Mind blown
- Care to elaborate?
  
  Types of tofu are silken, soft, medium, firm, extra firm, and super firm
  
  Horrible to eat.

Holy shit! 😱

Firmware is the Hardware of Software
- I've always thought of it more as the software of hardware.
  
  That sounds like drivers

How come I never noticed that? That’s brilliant :)

Chubware.

Bachelors in Computer Science.... Never made the connection.

The entire foundation of my life is built on quicksand.
- When we getting quickware
- Firmsand.

I thought it had something to do with firms (the noun)...

What the hell!
How did I understand that just now?
- possibly because a "firm" is also a word for a business / company, so "firmware" as the chipset software coming from the firm that manufactures said chipset makes perfect sense. at least that's why I never sought an alternate explanation - and I am not fully convinced OP is right, actually.
  
  From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware
  History and etymology
  Ascher Opler coined the term firmware in a 1967 Datamation article,[2][failed verification] as an intermediary term between "hardware" and "software". In this article, Opler was referring to a new kind of computer program that had a different practical and psychological purpose from traditional programs from the user's perspective.
  As computers began to increase in complexity, it became clear that various programs needed to first be initiated and run to provide a consistent environment necessary for running more complex programs at the user's discretion. This required programming the computer to run those programs automatically. Furthermore, as companies, universities, and marketers wanted to sell computers to laypeople with little technical knowledge, greater automation became necessary to allow a lay-user to easily run programs for practical purposes. This gave rise to a kind of software that a user would not consciously run, and it led to software that a lay user wouldn't even know about.[3]
  Originally, it meant the contents of a writable control store (a small specialized high-speed memory), containing microcode that defined and implemented the computer's instruction set, and that could be reloaded to specialize or modify the instructions that the central processing unit (CPU) could execute. As originally used, firmware contrasted with hardware (the CPU itself) and software (normal instructions executing on a CPU). It was not composed of CPU machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary between hardware and software; thus the name firmware. Over time, popular usage extended the word firmware to denote any computer program that is tightly linked to hardware, including BIOS on PCs, boot firmware on smartphones, computer peripherals, or the control systems on simple consumer electronic devices such as microwave ovens, remote controls.
  
  But firmware doesn't have to be from the firm that manufacturers said chipset. Third party firmware is a common thing.

"Firmware" is a terrible name, it's exactly software.
- I disagree. Firmware originally referred to things in ROM or EEPROM. Basically software that is firmly in place and doesn't change, providing an abstraction layer between the hardware and software.
  
  This treats the software as if it were a physical chip which can't be practically changed due to the physics of microchips. The imutability of the storage medium is just a choice of the manufacturer. Sometimes this is a good cost saving feature and sometimes this so they can include anti-features such as preventing repairing your device (e.g. OneWheel).
- It's closer to the hardware. Generally harder to update. It's less frequently updated. And it's less fault tolerant.
  Idk, sure, it's technically software. But it's pretty clearly at least a distinct subsection that deserves it's own moniker.
- The only common thing between software and firmware is the coding part. Everything else is different. Fault tolerance, memory management, MCU optimization, etc.

"Mediumware" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

This reminds me of when, during the building and development of the Apollo program- electrical engineers were tasked with effectively creating the "software" of the guidance system, and when one of the lead developers told his wife "I'm working on the software for the rocket" She replied "We're not going to tell people that you're working in underpants."

Penis joke!
- Half-chub-ware.

dang

I knew this but I'm pretty sure I just assumed that's what it meant somewhere along the way.

It all makes sense now. Damn.

Oooh... Never thought of that...

holy shit

Turgidware, if you will.

I've always thought about it as the way the software and hardware talk to each other.

It'd be really interesting to know ages of people who already knew this and those who didn't.
BTW, already knew it, 58. But then, I remember computers from the 80s and earlier that had the entire OS set in firmware and were not updateable.
- 38 and I thought firm meant company. Like the firm that created the software for the hardware.
  
  I'm with you, and still think that's the more likely explanation. Definitely the one that makes more sense.

Everything is dicks.

Why not call it halfchub-ware

….. wow I just got that too…

holy shit

Its firm where it counts.

How can you be 30 years in the industry and not know what firmware is?
- You can know the name of a thing without realizing where the name comes from.
  
  Yes my bad, misunderstood this as "I don't know what firmware is"
- I think he does know what a firmware. Just didnt't realize the origin of the term.
  A firmware is neither soft nor hard... it's firm.
  (Or maybe I completely misunderstood the tweet 🙄
  
  Oh the name, completely misunderstood this as "I don't know what firmware is".
- I know, right? That's why I never call tech support. Nowadays I'm practically computer illiterate, but I still know how to find answers without hearing: "Hello It, have you tried turning it off and on again?".