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This page doesn't clearly explain what a bug is or why anyone would care.
When a computer program doesn't work right, that's a bug. It could be design error or coding error, but the user doesn't know or care about this distinction. The answers are coming out wrong, or a feature just plain won't work.
We could list typical causes of bugs, as well as remediation efforts or strategies to prevent bugs arising in the first place.
The moth was definitely NOT the origin of the term bug. If you read Grace Hopper's log carefully, you will see the following points: 1. She wrote "The first actual case of bug being found" which implies that at the time of the writing, they knew of many other cases of bugs that were not actual. 2. i.e. the term "bug" was in use before this moth was found. 3. If the term was really based on some kind of insects, then, this moth would not be first. Kowloonese 21:13, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
More than likely debugging dates back to Chimpanzees removing lice from their troop or Cromagnon doing likewise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheRook ( talk • contribs) 18:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
The date given for the Mark II moth is wrong. It should be 1947, not 1945. Note that in the first line of the quoted section, it says "n 1946, when Hopper was released from active duty...", yet in the last line of that quote it's saying 1945 -- the previous year! Also, if you follow the link to the actual log page, it gives the date as 1947.
I've corrected this date. T-bonham 21:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Just in case anyone wants an example of an earlier usage of the term bug, here's a quote from Edison:
"I have the right principle and am on the right track, but time, hard work and some good luck are necessary too. It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise -- this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs" -- as such little faults and difficulties are called -- show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached."
(Edison to Puskas, 13 November 1878, Edison papers, Edison National Laboratory, U.S. National Park Service, West Orange, N.J., cited in Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A History of the American Genius for Invention, Penguin Books, 1989, on page 75) -- Fastfission 10:56, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
There are several references to bug in the modern sense in Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. probably where Edison came across it anyway, since he started out as a telegraph operator. I think this article ought to include at least a pointer to them...
The explanation for the Mars Climate Orbiter mishap is wrong. It was not about confusing meters and yards. The quantity in question was impulse, not length. The report on the mishap states that the expected unit was Newton-seconds while the delivered data was pound-seconds.
This does present a problem though because length is easy to grasp for the public while impulse is a fairly unknown quantity. The concept of meters/yards is well known, Newton-seconds isn't.
Suggestion: let the text "failed to convert yards to meters" instead be: "failed to convert from imperial to metric units"
-- J-Star 22:33, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The link to MIM-104 Patriot indicates that the failure in Dharan was caused by a computer bug. There's no corresponding text in MIM-104 Patriot. If there's any support for this theory, it should be added to Patriot article. Otherwise the link should be deleted.--- Isaac R 01:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There were some disgraceful examples of operating system bias in the "modern bugs and security holes" section. Please, let's leave out our preferences and opinions and state the facts. Every operating system is vulnerable to viruses and security holes, not just WINDOWS. Please give us a break. The section even tried to say that Linux's "Kernel Panic" was only some kind of mythology and isn't really needed because Linux NEVER crashes! And don't forget that closed-source software is out to destroy humanity.
Well, Linux has crashed and crashes much less often than Windows. Furthermore, the desing of Linux and of the other Unix allows them to resist to viruses better than Windows.
There are links to Star Trek episodes that don't have any berring on bugs or defects and all of the video game links are to the products themesleves not to defects found in them. Unless someone can link to sepefic bugs, don't put a link there. I will check back shortly and remove these links if they are not fixed. Walter Görlitz
I'm starting to remove the irrelevant. Complain loudly if you want, but keep the discussion to how the bugs were created and how they serve to teach us not to create new bugs in the future, not things that annoy you.
"but open source software has the advantage of having a community of qualified developers to work on and improve software (and fix bugs)" That is the fallacy of many eyes; that is, nobody really knows if the guy who worked on it really was qualified at all. BS.
I once heard that Shakespeare is supposedly the earliest recorded use of the 'bug' in this way. Can anyone confirm if this is true?
TheOddMan
In "Writing the laboratory Notebook" (
ISBN
0-8412-0906-5), the author Howard Kanare also relates the moth story and says: "The term bug was already in common use to connote problems in electrical and mechanical systems before this time. It came from the Welsh term bwg, meaning a bugbear or hobgoblin."
sblatt
This needs a little editing. Under "Etymology", the sentence "Problems with radar electronics during World War II were referred to as bugs (or glitches), and there is additional evidence that the usage dates back much earlier" follows an example of an earlier usage. Move this up to show a reverse chronolgy and it will read easier. I'll leave this to the editors.
Greenbomb101 (
talk)
18:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
By the way, it is quite funny to note that even if the text correctly debunks the myth of the first bug discovered by Grace Hopper, the description of the picture associated with it still describes it as the origin of the expressions "bug" and "debug". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eforler ( talk • contribs) 16:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
If a bug is something in software that causes a program to run incorrectly, why is this page at "computer bug" instead of "software bug"? "Computer bug" seems to imply there is something wrong with the hardware, not the software running on it. What does everyone else think? — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:58, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Done. This has created a number of double redirects. Any help in fixing would be greatly appreciated. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I saw this game on the list of Video Games bug list, but I haven't seen any citations about this. Is there anyone?
CDO
The definition of 'bug' given here is programming centric. This is fine, so long as we have a more general term, 'defect' say, for errors that can occur during requirements, analysis, or design. However, a search on 'defect' (and several synonyms) fails to retrieve any information on software.
If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MellorSJ ( talk • contribs) .
I added a bullet on programming style under the "Prevention" section.
Good programming style is after all our first line of defence, and typos are the first and I strongly suspect, the most common cause of bugs. I feel that the role played by uncaught typos doing things like throwing off the program flow is somewhat underplayed elsewhere on the page - they aren't mentioned at all in the "types of bugs" section, for instance. All the bugs listed are methodological bugs: flaws in the reasoning of the programmer, rather than in his fingers.
However, while these are critical concepts in programming, I'm unsure if that section should be there, or if it should just be a brief mention here, and a new section created in programming style, called something like "bug avoidance". Or link to defensive programming and bulk up the [ potential bugs] section? Thoughts? DewiMorgan 01:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Code analysis and even compiling was overlooked as a bug prevention tools. IMHO exception handling happens at runtime and therefore is not prevention. 203.20.238.2 ( talk) 07:27, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Buffer overflow was listed three times with different wording. Please don't add to this unless you have written code. I agree there should be a section for known bugs, because this tiny list is just the tip of the ice burg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.121.216.47 ( talk) 01:47, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
There should be a section about the meaning of known bugs. You can find them in many big software projects and they are not fixed, because they are not severe and chances are that you will create a new bug if you fix this one.
I might create this section somewhen on my own, but I don't have time for that now. Maybe somebody likes the idea and is faster than me. -- JonnyJD 23:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, there are many reasons for a known bugs list in software projects. Most of them are just TODO lists or information on bugfixes in upcoming updates. Most of them don't need to be mentioned in an extra section in this article. I can't find good sources for my point and this problem seems widely unknown. I don't create a section for the sake of WP:NOR. It is not my own idea and I already learned it that way, but it is not widely accepted or known. -- JonnyJD 23:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
[ Be Bold]. Add the section and let it be shot down, rather than proposing a section and letting the proposal die from being ignored. I will add the section: please do tweak it, boldly. DewiMorgan 14:51, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I think this article needs to list "Status" of bugs, which are provided by bugzilla and other bug reporting software.
Is a short list. Explanations should be added for each as well. -- 99.154.3.248 ( talk) 16:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The book "THE STANDARD ELECTRICAL DICTIONARY" by T. O'CONOR SLOANE, published in 1892 contains these two entries:
Bug. Any fault or trouble in the connections or working of electric apparatus.
Bug Trap. A connection or arrangement for overcoming a "bug." It is said that the terms "bug" and "bug trap" originated in quadruplex telegraphy.
These do not predate the 1878 Edison quote, but they do indicate the term was in widespread use by 1892. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drifter99 ( talk • contribs) 00:10, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Doesn't validate under XHTML 1.0 Transitional DocType due to an ID misnaming error. -- 69.125.25.190 ( talk) 07:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
The link to "Bug Tracking Basics: A beginner’s guide to reporting and tracking defects (Mitch Allen)" merely leads to a book store. The link does not provide any further information on the topic itself.-- 213.39.136.30 ( talk) 23:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
It's a cute story, but only of minimal relevance to this article. Grace Hopper simply pasted a moth into a log book as a kind of joke. Whether the bug caused a hardware problem or not is sort of interesting, but this article is not about computer hardware. Story should be a section in another article, like her bio. -- Uncle Ed ( talk) 19:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
The bug (which, by the way, someone else found) was in a relay; that's a mechanical part. Not only that, but a " hardware bug" would be generally be a design fault. Anyway, not a software bug, even if the moth caused the relay to malfunction so that the program produced incorrect results.
I think what makes the story so charming is that it is not meant literally but was a light-hearted inside joke. The term "bug" had already been used by Bob Campbell (according to Howard Aiken) and even earlier by Tom Edison.
Can we work together on this? -- Uncle Ed ( talk) 20:13, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
This terminology, " Mistake metamorphism," may well be appropriate, but is not particularly an accepted term. This author cites his own publication as a reference. If the term is accepted by further citation of this authors work, then it may be a appropriate section of this article. Otherwise this section should be deleted. Softtest123 ( talk) 03:05, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't generally edit wikipedia so I'm just leaving a note here for those who might consider making a decision, but poking around the web on the history of the "computer bug" terminology and the story of the moth in the Mark II I found a source claiming that the notation "First actual case of bug being found" was actually added to the logbook considerably later than 1947, probably in 1979. I have no idea of the reliability of the source, but this interview with the Dahlgren Navy Base retiree who eventually gave the logbook to the Smithsonian claims that the note was added to clarify the historical record at the request of Ralph Niemann, head of the Strategic Systems Department at Dahlgren and one of the mathematicians who originally accompanied the Mark II to the naval base. http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2012/052012/05242012/701244 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.65.74 ( talk) 03:06, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
In my opinion, there is a difference between defects and bugs. A defect is a failure in a system to meet certain requirements (whether they are non-existing in a system, or bugged and don't perform like they should), while a bug is more specific the failure of existing features, and can't be used to describe the absence of a feature. Yet many pages link to this Software Bug page, while the meaning is actually a defect. Examples of such pages are the pages describing bug tracking systems, like Mantis.
I think it would be good to create a defect page, to prevent a loss of information (or even giving a wrong impression that a defect is equal to a bug) when linking from pages describing a defect.
Please let me know if you think this definition I provided is wrong, I found a bug defined both as 'a defect in software'(dictionaries) and a 'error or fault in software' (this article defines it like this), the latter supporting this suggestion, the former contradicting it. Maybe we should first clearly define what we consider a bug, keeping in mind above suggested change, then talk about this change afterwards.
213.224.2.142 ( talk) 08:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
I just heard a bug reference in the movie - Edison, The Man (1940) [1] - towards the end of the movie when Edison determines that his two dynamos have a problem because the speed governors were not synced until he mechanically linked them.
His first erroneous attempt caused the dynamos to act as a motor/generator combo until the governors were mechanically linked. He wanted the dynamos to work as parallel generators. In the movie, Spencer Tracy distinctly used the term "bugs" for this problem when he first attempted to light up New York City.
Granted, this is a movie. But the term "bug" was obviously used during Edison's invention period for mechanical design issues that needed to be resolved and thus included in the movie. Re-quoting the previous Edison quote - ["Bugs" — as such little faults and difficulties are called]. And the movie itself is from 1940, which is earlier than when it was first used for software. It seems likely that "bugs" was an engineering term before it made it into software. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.189.8.211 ( talk) 03:22, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
References
Hi, I am currently overviewing a bug tracker (mantis) for the software project I am a community manager for. We are discussing setting up a triage system. We use MantisBT. I really needed info on this but the wiki area for it is prettey bad and has two warnings also /info/en/?search=Software_bug#Bug_management
I would like to work on this, is anyone free in the next few days to pull something together colabaritivley? We could use my project IRC to meet, or something else.
Thanks
Anna — Preceding unsigned comment added by Missannafjmorris ( talk • contribs) 15:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
The bug tracking section seems to have morphed over time to include issue tracking content. Both JIRA with the JIRA Agile plug-in and Bugzilla with several different Agile plug-ins, listed here, allow the addition of user stories and even epics to pure defect tracking tools. I see no need to exclude that information and pass them off as generic "issue tracking" tools. While they're not bugs, they're in bug tracking software. They're also not issues either. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 00:49, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
Is it really necessary for both references to 2001: A Space Odyssey to mention the year (1968)? It's well-known that the novel and movie script were written concurrently, with feedback in both directions, so surely giving the year in both cases is redundant. — Korax1214 ( talk) 15:11, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
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A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from defects in a program's source code, its design, or in components and operating systems used by such programs. Defects arise from mistakes, errors, and oversights during the process software development or system deployment. Some bugs arise from the tooling used to create the software, such as compiler defects leading to incorrect code generation. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy (defective).
All serious software developers know in their heart of hearts that the word "bug" is an industry-standard euphemism, and always has been. I was joking with my wife that Freud also had a theory of software defects, but considered it too contentious to discuss in public. The reason "bug" is a euphemism is that it invokes two metaphorical frames: The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley, and Whac-a-Mole anthill culture, which somehow software developers like to imagine (ego defense) as some kind of glorious OODA loop, notwithstanding the curse of dimensionality (note how the machine learning people actually talk about the CoD as a real thing; it sure helps that recurrent neural network bypass about what actually amounts to "correct" (the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for the fragile ego).
Those who actually take eliminating defects seriously (validation and proof communities) prefer the term "defect" over "bug". To put this on a highly reductive footing: functional programming has defects (a steady trickle), while imperative programming has bugs (in copious flow).
In my mind, contrary to the founding metaphor bugs mainly arise from defects (no, I'm including in the category of software defects neither lack of a better screen door, nor an adhesive duck deficiency). To my mind, a bug is a defect on the hoof. In imperative programming, one engages in wild, out-of-control hay rides around the haystack full of needles far more often than in functional programming (whereas in functional programming, one declares at mid-morning coffee break, "well, that's a wrap for program correctness; damn shame about the wall clock").
I realize this page is called "software bug", but we all know (since Brazil at least) that this is largely a historical in-joke. These were always defects, in the same way that proofs have flaws, but not bugs (some of these 'flaws' persisted for centuries, for example, as mathematicians were slow to realize that Euclidean geometry had come to a permanent fork in the road; physics is even more prone to bugs/defects/flaws that are closer to wailing walls than any of the aforementioned terms—see renormalization and quantum gravity). If we were going to map software engineering onto geometry, defects would be the Euclidean geometry, and bugs would be the non-Euclidean geometry (ascendance of the "bug" terminology notwithstanding).
So my larger point is that we shouldn't let an accidental nomenclature shift the balance of this article more than necessary. The defect exists in the artifact, and the bug exists in the system of the artefact (whether this is the system of its specification, the system of its construction, or the system of its subsequent behaviour). The vast majority of bugs arise from tangible defects of workmanship.
I noodled on the lead thinking I could address this quickly, but then I thought I didn't want to post that change live, so I decided instead to abandon my noodle to the talk page of posterity.
Bottom line: is this a dictionary or an encyclopedia? You be the judge. — MaxEnt 19:10, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
As far as I know, a hardware bug is not the same as a software bug, but " hardware bug" still redirects to this page. Is this an error? Jarble ( talk) 06:41, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
In the haste to be pedantic about hardware and software, what is being lost is the fact that the hardware/software distinction isn't nearly as old as the computer, and that some of the early examples that are being deleted because they are "hardware bugs" involved early computers that were programmed by rewiring the hardware.
Plus, and I shouldn't have to explain this, when your change is reverted, you need to leave it alone and discuss it on the article talk page. Hitting the revert button and then opening up the discussion is disruptive behavior that can result in a block. When in doubt leave the page the way it was before the content dispute. See WP:BRD and WP:TALKDONTREVERT for details. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 16:36, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Korny, please identify the following as hardware or software.
(If you have trouble, I can tell you the exact compiler used).
1 ------------------------------------------------------- 2 -- Design Name : Code for Korny O'Near to identify 3 -- File Name : [obfuscated] 4 -- Function : Hardware? Or Software? 5 -- Coder : [obfuscated] 6 -- Translator : [obfuscated] 7 ------------------------------------------------------- 8 library ieee; 9 use ieee.std_logic_1164.all; 10 use ieee.std_logic_unsigned.all; 11 12 entity u_c is 13 port ( 14 cout :out std_logic_vector (7 downto 0); -- [obfuscated] 15 enable :in std_logic; -- [obfuscated] 16 clk :in std_logic; -- [obfuscated] 17 reset :in std_logic -- [obfuscated] 18 ); 19 end entity; 20 21 architecture rtl of u_c is 22 signal count :std_logic_vector (7 downto 0); 23 begin 24 process (clk, reset) begin 25 if (reset = '1') then 26 count <= (others=>'0'); 27 elsif (rising_edge(clk)) then 28 if (enable = '1') then 29 count <= count + 1; 30 end if; 31 end if; 32 end process; 33 cout <= count; 34 end architecture;
-- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:57, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
WP:V does not state that everything must have a reference. It states that "other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source". That is followed up with "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable. All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material. Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. Please immediately remove contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced." And later yet, that you should try to fins a source for the material. Did you do that? I found multiple on my first search. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 16:59, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
I agree with the removal of the bugs as they were unsourced. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 15:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/was-the-first-computer-bug-a-real-insect/ -- Espoo ( talk) 23:25, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
The section Software bug § Well-known bugs contains the following sentence:
Reading the section, I think there is some text missing. I don't see how the Year 2000 problem that the preceding sentence in the section talks about can be seen as an incompatibility between APIs. – Tea2min ( talk) 11:19, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
The current description is quite long, and is the lede sentence of the article. Can we come up with something that is shorter but not incorrect? Walter Görlitz ( talk) 03:54, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
Recently, I boldly
changed the article's
WP:Short description, with the edit summary Shorten short description; purpose is to distinguish, not precisely define it, *as short as possible* per guidelines.
.
Walter Görlitz then
reverted it, with the edit summary it should not be intentionally wrong or misleading though
So, per
WP:BRD, let's now discuss. (Note I am ignoring the part about my being intentionally wrong or misleading. I'm sure it wasn't meant that way.)
Here are the two short descriptions involved.
Error, flaw, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways(>140 characters)
Flaw in a computer program(<40 characters)
SD1 is the original short description, and remains the status quo during this BRD. SD2 is my bold change. (Additional versions can be proposed in this discussion; I suggest using the same "SD#" format for consistency and ease of reference in this discussion.)
(Note that the short description system for WP articles is fairly new. I encourage editors interested in them to review its guidelines, which have gone through considerable updates since short descriptions were introduced, and continues to evolve. I myself found discovered some recent changes while creating this comment.)
For my take on the two SDs, here's my emphasis within the first six points of the guideline for SD contents:
Guide point 2: SD1 exceeds the recommended length by over 100 characters; SD2 doesn't.
Guide point 3 and 4: SD1 specifically attempts to precisely define the subject, contrary to the guide, by simply and literally copying the whole first sentence of the article. SD2 focuses on distinguishing the subject from other titles with "software" or "bug" in their name or other articles having similar key terms in the body.
Guide point 6: When SD1 is abbreviated to about 40 characters, it becomes Error, flaw, failure, or fault in a
... followed by some part of the word computer
depending on where it's chopped off. This would make the short description that appears incorrect, associating the subject with some fragment of "computer" instead of "computer program". SD2 is an actual short description, so won't suffer this fate.
As to SD2 being "wrong or misleading", I'm at a loss to see how. It could reasonably be argued that it is less precise, but I don't even see that. (And precision isn't a goal of an SD anyway.)
Comments? Suggestions? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 21:36, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
I'd like to add the paragraph bellow in the implications. Since I'm involved in the research, I write it here first to see that it is written in objective way. I'll be happy to receive feedback.
Other than the damage caused by bugs, some of their cost is due to the effort invested in fixing them. Lientz and al. [1] showed in 1978 that the median of projects invest 17% of the development effort in bug fixing. In a research in 2020 [2] on GitHub repositories showed the nowadays the median is 20%. — Preceding unsigned comment added by APH ( talk • contribs) 04:54, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
References
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This is the discussion point for the merge proposal of Known error into the Software bug#Bug management section. The request was made in March 2021 by user Kvng. Please provide your feedback on supporting / opposing the proposal, and any action items. - Jay (Talk) 14:11, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Bug scrub. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 June 17#Bug scrub until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. - Jay (Talk) 19:44, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Where the term "Computer bug" originated from and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Where the term "Computer bug" originated from until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:32, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Bug/Glitch and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Bug/Glitch until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:34, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Steps To Reproduce and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Steps To Reproduce until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:39, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Pc errors and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Pc errors until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:43, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Do we really need to use the word "bug"? What's wrong with the word "error"? I am a programmer but I never use the word "bug", and somehow other programmers understand me, and don't laugh at me. Some of them even started using the word "error". 85.193.208.36 ( talk) 12:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
@ Smjg WRT _a_ crash is not a bug - it is an occurrence, and furthermore a given instance may or may not be due to a bug I think you misunderstand the point. A crash may or may not be due to a bug, true. Multiple crashes may or may not be due to a bug. A misspelled word may or may not be a bug! ... Bug is a judgment; indicating that there is a problem/defect/fault.... This sentence is about severity of a bug; not how to identify a bug. _If_ a bug causes a crash, then the bug is relatively severe since it causes relatively severe behavior. Further, saying that a bug is severe if it causes a crash, does not imply that the crash only happens/happened one time. In fact, people might very well say that a bug causes a crash; meaning that the crash happens every time a certain condition is encountered. ... The point is that bug runs a wide range from small to big. Imagine a reader unfamiliar with the term. I think they would find it useful to know that bug does not imply big or small. But, we shouldn't go overboard with giving lots of examples or giving the biggest or smallest example possible. Just give them a hint what small might be and what big might be. KISS Stevebroshar ( talk) 12:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
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This page doesn't clearly explain what a bug is or why anyone would care.
When a computer program doesn't work right, that's a bug. It could be design error or coding error, but the user doesn't know or care about this distinction. The answers are coming out wrong, or a feature just plain won't work.
We could list typical causes of bugs, as well as remediation efforts or strategies to prevent bugs arising in the first place.
The moth was definitely NOT the origin of the term bug. If you read Grace Hopper's log carefully, you will see the following points: 1. She wrote "The first actual case of bug being found" which implies that at the time of the writing, they knew of many other cases of bugs that were not actual. 2. i.e. the term "bug" was in use before this moth was found. 3. If the term was really based on some kind of insects, then, this moth would not be first. Kowloonese 21:13, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
More than likely debugging dates back to Chimpanzees removing lice from their troop or Cromagnon doing likewise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheRook ( talk • contribs) 18:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
The date given for the Mark II moth is wrong. It should be 1947, not 1945. Note that in the first line of the quoted section, it says "n 1946, when Hopper was released from active duty...", yet in the last line of that quote it's saying 1945 -- the previous year! Also, if you follow the link to the actual log page, it gives the date as 1947.
I've corrected this date. T-bonham 21:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Just in case anyone wants an example of an earlier usage of the term bug, here's a quote from Edison:
"I have the right principle and am on the right track, but time, hard work and some good luck are necessary too. It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise -- this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs" -- as such little faults and difficulties are called -- show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached."
(Edison to Puskas, 13 November 1878, Edison papers, Edison National Laboratory, U.S. National Park Service, West Orange, N.J., cited in Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A History of the American Genius for Invention, Penguin Books, 1989, on page 75) -- Fastfission 10:56, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
There are several references to bug in the modern sense in Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. probably where Edison came across it anyway, since he started out as a telegraph operator. I think this article ought to include at least a pointer to them...
The explanation for the Mars Climate Orbiter mishap is wrong. It was not about confusing meters and yards. The quantity in question was impulse, not length. The report on the mishap states that the expected unit was Newton-seconds while the delivered data was pound-seconds.
This does present a problem though because length is easy to grasp for the public while impulse is a fairly unknown quantity. The concept of meters/yards is well known, Newton-seconds isn't.
Suggestion: let the text "failed to convert yards to meters" instead be: "failed to convert from imperial to metric units"
-- J-Star 22:33, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The link to MIM-104 Patriot indicates that the failure in Dharan was caused by a computer bug. There's no corresponding text in MIM-104 Patriot. If there's any support for this theory, it should be added to Patriot article. Otherwise the link should be deleted.--- Isaac R 01:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There were some disgraceful examples of operating system bias in the "modern bugs and security holes" section. Please, let's leave out our preferences and opinions and state the facts. Every operating system is vulnerable to viruses and security holes, not just WINDOWS. Please give us a break. The section even tried to say that Linux's "Kernel Panic" was only some kind of mythology and isn't really needed because Linux NEVER crashes! And don't forget that closed-source software is out to destroy humanity.
Well, Linux has crashed and crashes much less often than Windows. Furthermore, the desing of Linux and of the other Unix allows them to resist to viruses better than Windows.
There are links to Star Trek episodes that don't have any berring on bugs or defects and all of the video game links are to the products themesleves not to defects found in them. Unless someone can link to sepefic bugs, don't put a link there. I will check back shortly and remove these links if they are not fixed. Walter Görlitz
I'm starting to remove the irrelevant. Complain loudly if you want, but keep the discussion to how the bugs were created and how they serve to teach us not to create new bugs in the future, not things that annoy you.
"but open source software has the advantage of having a community of qualified developers to work on and improve software (and fix bugs)" That is the fallacy of many eyes; that is, nobody really knows if the guy who worked on it really was qualified at all. BS.
I once heard that Shakespeare is supposedly the earliest recorded use of the 'bug' in this way. Can anyone confirm if this is true?
TheOddMan
In "Writing the laboratory Notebook" (
ISBN
0-8412-0906-5), the author Howard Kanare also relates the moth story and says: "The term bug was already in common use to connote problems in electrical and mechanical systems before this time. It came from the Welsh term bwg, meaning a bugbear or hobgoblin."
sblatt
This needs a little editing. Under "Etymology", the sentence "Problems with radar electronics during World War II were referred to as bugs (or glitches), and there is additional evidence that the usage dates back much earlier" follows an example of an earlier usage. Move this up to show a reverse chronolgy and it will read easier. I'll leave this to the editors.
Greenbomb101 (
talk)
18:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
By the way, it is quite funny to note that even if the text correctly debunks the myth of the first bug discovered by Grace Hopper, the description of the picture associated with it still describes it as the origin of the expressions "bug" and "debug". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eforler ( talk • contribs) 16:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
If a bug is something in software that causes a program to run incorrectly, why is this page at "computer bug" instead of "software bug"? "Computer bug" seems to imply there is something wrong with the hardware, not the software running on it. What does everyone else think? — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:58, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Done. This has created a number of double redirects. Any help in fixing would be greatly appreciated. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I saw this game on the list of Video Games bug list, but I haven't seen any citations about this. Is there anyone?
CDO
The definition of 'bug' given here is programming centric. This is fine, so long as we have a more general term, 'defect' say, for errors that can occur during requirements, analysis, or design. However, a search on 'defect' (and several synonyms) fails to retrieve any information on software.
If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MellorSJ ( talk • contribs) .
I added a bullet on programming style under the "Prevention" section.
Good programming style is after all our first line of defence, and typos are the first and I strongly suspect, the most common cause of bugs. I feel that the role played by uncaught typos doing things like throwing off the program flow is somewhat underplayed elsewhere on the page - they aren't mentioned at all in the "types of bugs" section, for instance. All the bugs listed are methodological bugs: flaws in the reasoning of the programmer, rather than in his fingers.
However, while these are critical concepts in programming, I'm unsure if that section should be there, or if it should just be a brief mention here, and a new section created in programming style, called something like "bug avoidance". Or link to defensive programming and bulk up the [ potential bugs] section? Thoughts? DewiMorgan 01:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Code analysis and even compiling was overlooked as a bug prevention tools. IMHO exception handling happens at runtime and therefore is not prevention. 203.20.238.2 ( talk) 07:27, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Buffer overflow was listed three times with different wording. Please don't add to this unless you have written code. I agree there should be a section for known bugs, because this tiny list is just the tip of the ice burg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.121.216.47 ( talk) 01:47, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
There should be a section about the meaning of known bugs. You can find them in many big software projects and they are not fixed, because they are not severe and chances are that you will create a new bug if you fix this one.
I might create this section somewhen on my own, but I don't have time for that now. Maybe somebody likes the idea and is faster than me. -- JonnyJD 23:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, there are many reasons for a known bugs list in software projects. Most of them are just TODO lists or information on bugfixes in upcoming updates. Most of them don't need to be mentioned in an extra section in this article. I can't find good sources for my point and this problem seems widely unknown. I don't create a section for the sake of WP:NOR. It is not my own idea and I already learned it that way, but it is not widely accepted or known. -- JonnyJD 23:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
[ Be Bold]. Add the section and let it be shot down, rather than proposing a section and letting the proposal die from being ignored. I will add the section: please do tweak it, boldly. DewiMorgan 14:51, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I think this article needs to list "Status" of bugs, which are provided by bugzilla and other bug reporting software.
Is a short list. Explanations should be added for each as well. -- 99.154.3.248 ( talk) 16:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The book "THE STANDARD ELECTRICAL DICTIONARY" by T. O'CONOR SLOANE, published in 1892 contains these two entries:
Bug. Any fault or trouble in the connections or working of electric apparatus.
Bug Trap. A connection or arrangement for overcoming a "bug." It is said that the terms "bug" and "bug trap" originated in quadruplex telegraphy.
These do not predate the 1878 Edison quote, but they do indicate the term was in widespread use by 1892. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drifter99 ( talk • contribs) 00:10, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Doesn't validate under XHTML 1.0 Transitional DocType due to an ID misnaming error. -- 69.125.25.190 ( talk) 07:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
The link to "Bug Tracking Basics: A beginner’s guide to reporting and tracking defects (Mitch Allen)" merely leads to a book store. The link does not provide any further information on the topic itself.-- 213.39.136.30 ( talk) 23:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
It's a cute story, but only of minimal relevance to this article. Grace Hopper simply pasted a moth into a log book as a kind of joke. Whether the bug caused a hardware problem or not is sort of interesting, but this article is not about computer hardware. Story should be a section in another article, like her bio. -- Uncle Ed ( talk) 19:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
The bug (which, by the way, someone else found) was in a relay; that's a mechanical part. Not only that, but a " hardware bug" would be generally be a design fault. Anyway, not a software bug, even if the moth caused the relay to malfunction so that the program produced incorrect results.
I think what makes the story so charming is that it is not meant literally but was a light-hearted inside joke. The term "bug" had already been used by Bob Campbell (according to Howard Aiken) and even earlier by Tom Edison.
Can we work together on this? -- Uncle Ed ( talk) 20:13, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
This terminology, " Mistake metamorphism," may well be appropriate, but is not particularly an accepted term. This author cites his own publication as a reference. If the term is accepted by further citation of this authors work, then it may be a appropriate section of this article. Otherwise this section should be deleted. Softtest123 ( talk) 03:05, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't generally edit wikipedia so I'm just leaving a note here for those who might consider making a decision, but poking around the web on the history of the "computer bug" terminology and the story of the moth in the Mark II I found a source claiming that the notation "First actual case of bug being found" was actually added to the logbook considerably later than 1947, probably in 1979. I have no idea of the reliability of the source, but this interview with the Dahlgren Navy Base retiree who eventually gave the logbook to the Smithsonian claims that the note was added to clarify the historical record at the request of Ralph Niemann, head of the Strategic Systems Department at Dahlgren and one of the mathematicians who originally accompanied the Mark II to the naval base. http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2012/052012/05242012/701244 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.65.74 ( talk) 03:06, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
In my opinion, there is a difference between defects and bugs. A defect is a failure in a system to meet certain requirements (whether they are non-existing in a system, or bugged and don't perform like they should), while a bug is more specific the failure of existing features, and can't be used to describe the absence of a feature. Yet many pages link to this Software Bug page, while the meaning is actually a defect. Examples of such pages are the pages describing bug tracking systems, like Mantis.
I think it would be good to create a defect page, to prevent a loss of information (or even giving a wrong impression that a defect is equal to a bug) when linking from pages describing a defect.
Please let me know if you think this definition I provided is wrong, I found a bug defined both as 'a defect in software'(dictionaries) and a 'error or fault in software' (this article defines it like this), the latter supporting this suggestion, the former contradicting it. Maybe we should first clearly define what we consider a bug, keeping in mind above suggested change, then talk about this change afterwards.
213.224.2.142 ( talk) 08:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
I just heard a bug reference in the movie - Edison, The Man (1940) [1] - towards the end of the movie when Edison determines that his two dynamos have a problem because the speed governors were not synced until he mechanically linked them.
His first erroneous attempt caused the dynamos to act as a motor/generator combo until the governors were mechanically linked. He wanted the dynamos to work as parallel generators. In the movie, Spencer Tracy distinctly used the term "bugs" for this problem when he first attempted to light up New York City.
Granted, this is a movie. But the term "bug" was obviously used during Edison's invention period for mechanical design issues that needed to be resolved and thus included in the movie. Re-quoting the previous Edison quote - ["Bugs" — as such little faults and difficulties are called]. And the movie itself is from 1940, which is earlier than when it was first used for software. It seems likely that "bugs" was an engineering term before it made it into software. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.189.8.211 ( talk) 03:22, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
References
Hi, I am currently overviewing a bug tracker (mantis) for the software project I am a community manager for. We are discussing setting up a triage system. We use MantisBT. I really needed info on this but the wiki area for it is prettey bad and has two warnings also /info/en/?search=Software_bug#Bug_management
I would like to work on this, is anyone free in the next few days to pull something together colabaritivley? We could use my project IRC to meet, or something else.
Thanks
Anna — Preceding unsigned comment added by Missannafjmorris ( talk • contribs) 15:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
The bug tracking section seems to have morphed over time to include issue tracking content. Both JIRA with the JIRA Agile plug-in and Bugzilla with several different Agile plug-ins, listed here, allow the addition of user stories and even epics to pure defect tracking tools. I see no need to exclude that information and pass them off as generic "issue tracking" tools. While they're not bugs, they're in bug tracking software. They're also not issues either. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 00:49, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
Is it really necessary for both references to 2001: A Space Odyssey to mention the year (1968)? It's well-known that the novel and movie script were written concurrently, with feedback in both directions, so surely giving the year in both cases is redundant. — Korax1214 ( talk) 15:11, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
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A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from defects in a program's source code, its design, or in components and operating systems used by such programs. Defects arise from mistakes, errors, and oversights during the process software development or system deployment. Some bugs arise from the tooling used to create the software, such as compiler defects leading to incorrect code generation. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy (defective).
All serious software developers know in their heart of hearts that the word "bug" is an industry-standard euphemism, and always has been. I was joking with my wife that Freud also had a theory of software defects, but considered it too contentious to discuss in public. The reason "bug" is a euphemism is that it invokes two metaphorical frames: The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley, and Whac-a-Mole anthill culture, which somehow software developers like to imagine (ego defense) as some kind of glorious OODA loop, notwithstanding the curse of dimensionality (note how the machine learning people actually talk about the CoD as a real thing; it sure helps that recurrent neural network bypass about what actually amounts to "correct" (the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for the fragile ego).
Those who actually take eliminating defects seriously (validation and proof communities) prefer the term "defect" over "bug". To put this on a highly reductive footing: functional programming has defects (a steady trickle), while imperative programming has bugs (in copious flow).
In my mind, contrary to the founding metaphor bugs mainly arise from defects (no, I'm including in the category of software defects neither lack of a better screen door, nor an adhesive duck deficiency). To my mind, a bug is a defect on the hoof. In imperative programming, one engages in wild, out-of-control hay rides around the haystack full of needles far more often than in functional programming (whereas in functional programming, one declares at mid-morning coffee break, "well, that's a wrap for program correctness; damn shame about the wall clock").
I realize this page is called "software bug", but we all know (since Brazil at least) that this is largely a historical in-joke. These were always defects, in the same way that proofs have flaws, but not bugs (some of these 'flaws' persisted for centuries, for example, as mathematicians were slow to realize that Euclidean geometry had come to a permanent fork in the road; physics is even more prone to bugs/defects/flaws that are closer to wailing walls than any of the aforementioned terms—see renormalization and quantum gravity). If we were going to map software engineering onto geometry, defects would be the Euclidean geometry, and bugs would be the non-Euclidean geometry (ascendance of the "bug" terminology notwithstanding).
So my larger point is that we shouldn't let an accidental nomenclature shift the balance of this article more than necessary. The defect exists in the artifact, and the bug exists in the system of the artefact (whether this is the system of its specification, the system of its construction, or the system of its subsequent behaviour). The vast majority of bugs arise from tangible defects of workmanship.
I noodled on the lead thinking I could address this quickly, but then I thought I didn't want to post that change live, so I decided instead to abandon my noodle to the talk page of posterity.
Bottom line: is this a dictionary or an encyclopedia? You be the judge. — MaxEnt 19:10, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
As far as I know, a hardware bug is not the same as a software bug, but " hardware bug" still redirects to this page. Is this an error? Jarble ( talk) 06:41, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
In the haste to be pedantic about hardware and software, what is being lost is the fact that the hardware/software distinction isn't nearly as old as the computer, and that some of the early examples that are being deleted because they are "hardware bugs" involved early computers that were programmed by rewiring the hardware.
Plus, and I shouldn't have to explain this, when your change is reverted, you need to leave it alone and discuss it on the article talk page. Hitting the revert button and then opening up the discussion is disruptive behavior that can result in a block. When in doubt leave the page the way it was before the content dispute. See WP:BRD and WP:TALKDONTREVERT for details. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 16:36, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Korny, please identify the following as hardware or software.
(If you have trouble, I can tell you the exact compiler used).
1 ------------------------------------------------------- 2 -- Design Name : Code for Korny O'Near to identify 3 -- File Name : [obfuscated] 4 -- Function : Hardware? Or Software? 5 -- Coder : [obfuscated] 6 -- Translator : [obfuscated] 7 ------------------------------------------------------- 8 library ieee; 9 use ieee.std_logic_1164.all; 10 use ieee.std_logic_unsigned.all; 11 12 entity u_c is 13 port ( 14 cout :out std_logic_vector (7 downto 0); -- [obfuscated] 15 enable :in std_logic; -- [obfuscated] 16 clk :in std_logic; -- [obfuscated] 17 reset :in std_logic -- [obfuscated] 18 ); 19 end entity; 20 21 architecture rtl of u_c is 22 signal count :std_logic_vector (7 downto 0); 23 begin 24 process (clk, reset) begin 25 if (reset = '1') then 26 count <= (others=>'0'); 27 elsif (rising_edge(clk)) then 28 if (enable = '1') then 29 count <= count + 1; 30 end if; 31 end if; 32 end process; 33 cout <= count; 34 end architecture;
-- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:57, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
WP:V does not state that everything must have a reference. It states that "other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source". That is followed up with "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable. All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material. Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. Please immediately remove contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced." And later yet, that you should try to fins a source for the material. Did you do that? I found multiple on my first search. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 16:59, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
I agree with the removal of the bugs as they were unsourced. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 15:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/was-the-first-computer-bug-a-real-insect/ -- Espoo ( talk) 23:25, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
The section Software bug § Well-known bugs contains the following sentence:
Reading the section, I think there is some text missing. I don't see how the Year 2000 problem that the preceding sentence in the section talks about can be seen as an incompatibility between APIs. – Tea2min ( talk) 11:19, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
The current description is quite long, and is the lede sentence of the article. Can we come up with something that is shorter but not incorrect? Walter Görlitz ( talk) 03:54, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
Recently, I boldly
changed the article's
WP:Short description, with the edit summary Shorten short description; purpose is to distinguish, not precisely define it, *as short as possible* per guidelines.
.
Walter Görlitz then
reverted it, with the edit summary it should not be intentionally wrong or misleading though
So, per
WP:BRD, let's now discuss. (Note I am ignoring the part about my being intentionally wrong or misleading. I'm sure it wasn't meant that way.)
Here are the two short descriptions involved.
Error, flaw, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways(>140 characters)
Flaw in a computer program(<40 characters)
SD1 is the original short description, and remains the status quo during this BRD. SD2 is my bold change. (Additional versions can be proposed in this discussion; I suggest using the same "SD#" format for consistency and ease of reference in this discussion.)
(Note that the short description system for WP articles is fairly new. I encourage editors interested in them to review its guidelines, which have gone through considerable updates since short descriptions were introduced, and continues to evolve. I myself found discovered some recent changes while creating this comment.)
For my take on the two SDs, here's my emphasis within the first six points of the guideline for SD contents:
Guide point 2: SD1 exceeds the recommended length by over 100 characters; SD2 doesn't.
Guide point 3 and 4: SD1 specifically attempts to precisely define the subject, contrary to the guide, by simply and literally copying the whole first sentence of the article. SD2 focuses on distinguishing the subject from other titles with "software" or "bug" in their name or other articles having similar key terms in the body.
Guide point 6: When SD1 is abbreviated to about 40 characters, it becomes Error, flaw, failure, or fault in a
... followed by some part of the word computer
depending on where it's chopped off. This would make the short description that appears incorrect, associating the subject with some fragment of "computer" instead of "computer program". SD2 is an actual short description, so won't suffer this fate.
As to SD2 being "wrong or misleading", I'm at a loss to see how. It could reasonably be argued that it is less precise, but I don't even see that. (And precision isn't a goal of an SD anyway.)
Comments? Suggestions? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 21:36, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
I'd like to add the paragraph bellow in the implications. Since I'm involved in the research, I write it here first to see that it is written in objective way. I'll be happy to receive feedback.
Other than the damage caused by bugs, some of their cost is due to the effort invested in fixing them. Lientz and al. [1] showed in 1978 that the median of projects invest 17% of the development effort in bug fixing. In a research in 2020 [2] on GitHub repositories showed the nowadays the median is 20%. — Preceding unsigned comment added by APH ( talk • contribs) 04:54, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
References
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This is the discussion point for the merge proposal of Known error into the Software bug#Bug management section. The request was made in March 2021 by user Kvng. Please provide your feedback on supporting / opposing the proposal, and any action items. - Jay (Talk) 14:11, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Bug scrub. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 June 17#Bug scrub until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. - Jay (Talk) 19:44, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Where the term "Computer bug" originated from and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Where the term "Computer bug" originated from until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:32, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Bug/Glitch and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Bug/Glitch until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:34, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Steps To Reproduce and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Steps To Reproduce until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:39, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Pc errors and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 27#Pc errors until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 18:43, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Do we really need to use the word "bug"? What's wrong with the word "error"? I am a programmer but I never use the word "bug", and somehow other programmers understand me, and don't laugh at me. Some of them even started using the word "error". 85.193.208.36 ( talk) 12:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
@ Smjg WRT _a_ crash is not a bug - it is an occurrence, and furthermore a given instance may or may not be due to a bug I think you misunderstand the point. A crash may or may not be due to a bug, true. Multiple crashes may or may not be due to a bug. A misspelled word may or may not be a bug! ... Bug is a judgment; indicating that there is a problem/defect/fault.... This sentence is about severity of a bug; not how to identify a bug. _If_ a bug causes a crash, then the bug is relatively severe since it causes relatively severe behavior. Further, saying that a bug is severe if it causes a crash, does not imply that the crash only happens/happened one time. In fact, people might very well say that a bug causes a crash; meaning that the crash happens every time a certain condition is encountered. ... The point is that bug runs a wide range from small to big. Imagine a reader unfamiliar with the term. I think they would find it useful to know that bug does not imply big or small. But, we shouldn't go overboard with giving lots of examples or giving the biggest or smallest example possible. Just give them a hint what small might be and what big might be. KISS Stevebroshar ( talk) 12:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)