Until now, a childâs life has revolved mainly around the family. Adolescence has the effect of a stone dropped in water, as her social circle ripples outward to include friendships with members of the same sex, the opposite sex, different social and ethnic groups, and other adults, like a favorite teacher or coach.
Definition of:platform. A hardware and/or software architecture that serves as a foundation or base. The term originally dealt with only hardware, and it may still refer to only a CPU model or computer family.For example, the x86 PC is the world's largest hardware platform.IBM's Power Systems and Oracle's SPARC are also hardware platforms (see hardware platform for a larger list).n application can also be a platform if it is a base for other programs. For example, Web browsers accept third-party plug-ins, which are software components that add functionality. The browser becomes a platform to contain those components.
When purchasing software, it's important to know what platform the software was written for. Some software is platform-specific, which means the developers have expressly developed their application program to run on one platform -- Windows or Mac, for example. Software can also be cross-platform, which means the developers intended the object code to be executed on more than one platform -- Win/Mac, for example.