In article , Mayayana
wrote:

| ... which is
| short for application, a term which actually goes back over thirty
years.
|
| Oh, the term goes back way beyond "over thirty years": I remember filling
| out applications to college over half a century ago, as well as job
| applications and an application for a driver's license long before that.
| But they weren't being called apps yet, then :-) . It took Apple (who
else,
| after all?) to coin (and fail to copyright) the term "app", as "short" for
| "application program" (in lieu of simply "program").

The only people I've heard call Desktop software
an app is programmers.

then you need to get out more.

Apple then popularized it
for iPhone trinket apps.

no they didn't and they're not trinket apps either.

the app store is a distribution method, and includes things like
photoshop touch and lightroom mobile.

I now assume people mean
phone or tablet software when they say "app".

nope.

Most
people wouldn't know to call PC software an app.

oh yes they do.

I never liked the word. It sounds lazy. And a program
is really not an application until it's used for something.

nonsense. an application is an application whether or not it's used and
regardless of what it's used for when it is.

For that reason I prefer "program". A word processor is
a program. A letter typed in that program is an application.

nope. something done in a word processor is a *document*.

(Microsoft started calling .Net programs "solutions",
which is similar to "application". The term has marketing
built-in.)

..net is microsoft proprietary.

But then programmers are also fickle about what
they call themselves: author, developer, programmer,
engineer, architect.... They've tried every term from
the building trades.

there are many types of programmers.

some write apps, some write operating systems and some write server
back end code. there's a wide range of programming tasks and therefore
there cannot be one single term to define them all.

On the bright side, I haven't heard anyone say
"proggie" for awhile. That was the most adolescent,
obnoxious one I've heard.

another is 'lappie for laptop.

"i have a new proggie on my lappie."

gag.