Software recommendations tend to pass cause they're often 'how' to do things rather than a straight off "What do i need?". Shopping recommendations are bad cause firstly, they go stale (software dosen't in most cases), and they indicate a certain lack of homework.
I can dust off a two year old software rec question, and most of the software there would be still available in some fashion. I can't really say the same for hardware, if the answer is specific enough.
I'd note i'm 'guilty' of a few software rec questions, but generally they're useful/obscure bits of software, and they apparently don't exist (yet). In the one situation where the software was found, it was useful in at least 2-3 other questions.
I'd say a properly asked software question is quite nothing like a hardware rec question