Re: Bugs or Mistakes?

[Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <80i9la$i9e$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>,
  Richard D Riehle <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> In article <19991112202656.2368.rocketmail@web216.mail.yahoo.com>,
> 	MaryAnn Atkinson <maryann_30@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> In my experience, the word "bug" is often used as a euphemism
> to deemphasize personal responsibility for a set of mistakes.
> Many programmers do not take a "bug" as seriously as we might hope.

Considering that I tend to see engineers (myself included) take bugs
*too* personally, I find this attitude a bit amusing.

> As long as programmers euphemize away their mistakes by calling them
> "bugs," we will not be accepting the kind of responsibility for our
> actions demanded of other engineering disciplines.

In many walks of life you see efforts to change the way people
think about things by changing the word used to describe said thing. It
*never* works. Even if you can manage to change the word everyone uses,
the meaning of the old word will just migrate with it. A good example is
the word "shellshocked", which has now undergone several name changes in
a futile effort to run away from its own meaning.

Everyone working in this industry has pretty much the same concept of
what "bugs" are. Its the term we use for what happens when software
isn't working properly. You aren't going to be able to change how
engineers think about them by calling them "mistakes" any more than
marketing folks can change how customers think about them by calling
them "misfeatures".

--
T.E.D.


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