What does standalone mean in the world of software development?

The Spanish translation of “standalone”, sometimes written stand-alone or stand alone (I don’t know if it is more correct to write it one way or another), would be “autonomous”.

In the field of software programs it would be the same, a program that can work autonomously, that is, it can be installed and executed, or simply executed, on a system without the need for anything else.

To understand standalone we could talk about what a standalone program would not be. Let’s think of a frontend application that needs the server to work. That would not be a standalone application because even if you have it installed on the system it needs another system for it to work, therefore you would need to have an Internet connection to be able to talk to the server. Therefore, it would not be able to function autonomously. All software distributed therefore would not be standalone.

A standalone program would then be one that you can run on a computer and that works by itself without any other requirements. You can disconnect the Internet and it still works, and does not need access to other systems on the local network, etc. But standalone also has other uses in software development, as we can see in , for example, a program that does not need an operating system to work, or a portable application that does not need to be installed to work on a computer.

Another use could also be a program that does not need to be interpreted to work, since this interpreter would be like other software that would have to be installed on the computer and therefore the system would not be totally autonomous. If the software, eg C code, is already compiled and the executable created, then it could be a standalone program, if it doesn’t require compile time from other systems to work.

A game could be standalone when it can be played without an Internet connection, by a single player or several players sitting on the same computer. While an online game would not be standalone because it requires you to connect to the Internet and work against an online server.

Therefore, many degrees of software autonomy can be applied to the standalone concept. The thing goes there. I hope I have clarified it.