system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
eli5 what are Computer “Drivers”

After painstakingly installing printer drivers for a thermal printer at work I realized I still don’t truly understand what I was installing. (Bonus points if you can cover video card drivers too cause idk what drivers are In that sense either)
gpt
Drivers are the middle man between the Hardware and the Operating system. their job is to translate the OS's instructions into something the Hardware can interpret and then translate the output into something the OS can show you.


OS> Driver > Hardware

think of them like the " user manuals" the Operating system needs ot be able ot use the hardware, or if you want ot extend an analogy to us humans: picture it as you needing a manual for your brain to be able to command your limbs and understand the stimulus it receives from  them.


without drivers, software would need ot directly program the hardware and considering how many different models of any single device exist out there this  is impossible(or at least would be impactrical in terms of programming time)