Years ago, I asked myself where the line between hardware and software was. Last week I found my answer: there isn’t one.

The statement “software doesn’t exist” is provacative, precisely because it is the exact opposite of what everyone believes.

There is only hardware. Software represents a particular state of hardware, which allows you to put other hardware in a state you desire. That is it.

What you see on a monitor is simply a view into the current state of the hardware. When your fingers press keys, they are physically moving hardware to put other hardware in a new state.

Software is a useful abstraction which describes a set of hardware states. When you sell software, you are selling this set of hardware states, and the new states that can be obtained by interacting with the hardware states you are selling.

Software as a concept is useful, but it is an illusion.

Software doesn’t exist.