From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,FREEMAIL_FROM, INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,de5dfd6df880dd3 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Nick Roberts Subject: Re: Bugs or Mistakes? Date: 1999/11/13 Message-ID: <382DBE57.97B04F1E@callnetuk.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 548214876 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <19991112202656.2368.rocketmail@web216.mail.yahoo.com> <1999Nov12.201602.1@eisner> X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: da132d209.dialup.callnetuk.com X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: 13 Nov 1999 19:42:20 GMT, da132d209.dialup.callnetuk.com Organization: Computer Consultant MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-11-13T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: The story of the origin of the term 'bug' (the one that I heard, anyway), was back in the dark old days when a computer would fill an entire basement of a block, and have a cooling system like a wind tunnel. These cooling systems would inevitably develop areas of high humidity, and being also nice and warm, it was not unknown for such areas to be colonised by various insectival lifeforms. Occasionally, it is held, a bug would fall into the circuitry, causing sporadic anomalous misbehaviour. Naturally, this became the simplest way to explain any and all incorrect program behaviour to the (then utterly clueless) management. Nowadays, nobody is fooled. I have always liked the following definition from the 'Demon IT Book of Definitions': Debugger: the gentleman who sold you the software in the first place. :-) -- Nick Roberts