the.com/debug
The art of removing the bugs you confidently swore you never wrote.
means To find and fix errors, glitches, or faults in software, hardware, or any system that isn't behaving as intended.
from From 'de-' (to remove) plus 'bug,' the long-standing engineer's term for a flaw or fault. The famous story credits computing pioneer Grace Hopper's team, who in 1947 found an actual moth jammed in a Harvard Mark II relay and taped it into the logbook as the 'first actual case of bug being found.' Charming — but 'bug' for a mechanical defect predates that by decades; Thomas Edison was grumbling about 'bugs' in his inventions back in the 1870s. The moth was a great joke precisely because the word already existed.
- first bug
- A literal moth jammed a 1947 Harvard relay computer
- name origin
- Grace Hopper taped the moth into her logbook
- time sink
- Developers spend half their hours debugging, not building
- cruel twist
- Adding print statements often makes the bug vanish
- heisenbug
- Bugs that disappear the moment you observe them
therac-25 radiation overdoses — 1985-1987 medical accelerator software bug caused lethal radiation doses to 6 patients