Upgrading to windows 8

Is it possible to upgrade to windows 8 from 7 without losing any of your programs and literally having your PC's setup the same as it was before ie run a games executable with no problems or even software.  Even the likes of steam origin being the same. 

This is probably a really generic question but i don't really have to upgrade, it just would be good to know if you can do it with little to no problems.

Well in my experiance it wasn't as simple as that, i upgraded my laptop to Win8 but i had to reinstall a lot of programs and other complications