How do I launch a program in the background

Question

Due to many problems on my system, when I launch a program, it crashes whenever I ALT+TAB out of it. I need to ALT+TAB out in order to launch another necessary program. To try and avert this problem, I created a script to launch the program, and then launch the other program without me having to exit the program.

I thought this would work, but instead of doing what I wanted, it launched both programs, but when the second program launched, it would automatically come into focus, crashing my other program. Basically, I need to know how to launch a program from a batch script in the background, that is to say, without it automatically coming into focus.

Answer 1

To launch a program in the background add & to the end of the line.

example

watch lessc input.less output.css &;