Re: Business Week (12/6/99 issue) article on Software Quality

[rracine@myremarq.com (Roger Racine)]

On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 17:47:21 GMT, Richard D Riehle
<laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>In article <82ochh$27p$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>	Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>>You cannot change the language to be the way you want it to be.
>>Sure, like Humpty-Dumpty in Alice, you can make words mean
>>whatever you like, but if you want to be understood, you need
>>to use words in a standard manner. The word "bug" has a securely
>>established meaning (which incidentally is well described in
>>the OED). We are not about to change the meaning radically
>>because one person thinks it would be good to do so.
>
>How then, Robert, do we distinguish between a mistake and a "bug?"
>Is a bug simply some mystical entity that gobbles up tasty little
>chunks of code, an arthopodic alimentary canal with no sense of
>responsibility at either end?  Is a bug something we know is there,
>but cannot yet identify?  Is a mistake a bug that we have identified?

Why don't you look up the meaning in Robert's reference?  There is no
difference.  A bug is a mistake that has not been diagnosed.  The
cause is not known, but the effect is seen.  As if there were a bug in
the system mucking things up.

>
>What is so difficult about calling a bug an error, or at least a 
>defect that originates in an error?   When we use the word bug, we
>are suggesting that we have no idea what is wrong with our program.

Exactly.  We would have to say "I have an unknown problem in my
program" instead of "I have a bug in my program."

>I often hear it used to trivialize the presence of the so-called bug.
>

"Bug Report", "Problem Report", they mean the same thing.  I agree
that no one should trivialize problems where the cause is unknown.
That happens too much no matter what term is used.  For one example,
the first Space Shuttle flight was delayed a couple days due to a bug
(at the time the cause was unknown).  It had been seen in simulations,
but so seldom that it had not been resolved.  The Shuttle flew with
the error (it had been diagnosed by then, and was known to be an
initialization timing problem with a probability of about 2%).  

Do not let trivialization happen, no matter what word is used.

>Once it has been so identified, it is no longer a "bug" it is an
>engineering defect.  

Agreed.  And what is wrong with designating it that way?

>
>We recently had a police helicopter crash here in Silicon Valley. The
>headlines this morning identify the problem in terms of some defect, not
>as some kind of bug.  
>
>Dennison takes me to task for being a "shrill and crackpot."  I hope
>that is not true, but we shrills and crackpots rarely realize it when
>we are correctly identified as such.  My point of view is simply that
>no other branch of engineering, except software practice, consistently
>uses the word "bug" to label its errors and defects.  It will always be
>difficult to take software seriously as an engineering discipline as long
>as its practitioners insist on placing the blame for its mistakes on 
>some mystical creature.  It is a poetic appelation with little engineering
>value.
>

Electrical Engineers also use the term.  My guess is that software
folks picked it up from them.

Roger Racine