Re: "Bugs"

[Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu>]

On 8 Jan 1997, Robert Dewar wrote:

RDD> Richard Riehle says
RD> 
RR> "  The original "bug" was an actual insect that orginated outside the
RR>   computer in which it appeared.  If an error in one program
RR>   originates in some other program, it might be a "bug" in that
RR>   receiving program,but it is probably someone else's mistake."
> 
> 
RD> This is an old bit of urban legend, but is wrong, the term bug is very
RD> old. We are talking about meaning 3b in OED II:
RD> 
RD> "A defect or fault in a machine, plan, or the like, orig U.S."

  Sigh. From the point-of-view of my posting, which is related 
  to the notion of "bug" in the computer age, the "legend" does
  refer to a moth discovered to be shorting out some part of the
  computer.  

  Even if the story of the moth were aprocyphal, the lesson remains
  the same.  This lesson is, in fact, reinforced by the way the Oxford
  English Dictionary citation is worded,  "defect or fault."  My
  contention that what we call a bug in software is actually a
  mistake, is not annulled but ratified by the OED's animistic
  interpretation and definition.

RD> The first quotation given is 1889: "Pall Mall Gaz 11 Mar. 1/1
RD> "Mr Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights
RD> discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph -- an expression for solving a
RD> difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted
RD>  itself inside and is causing all the trouble."

  Could one find a better quotation to reaffirm my position on this
  issue. Here we have a case of an engineer trying to deflect the
  blame for his errors on some imaginary insect, a bug.  This does
  not sound substantially different from the modern-day programmer
  who adopts the same excuse for making a mistake.

  My original point, lest it be lost in the dialogue concerning
  the historicity of the word "bug," is that we too often and
  too freely resort to animism with the use of "bug" as a way to
  abdicate responsibility for our mistakes.  Software practice
  remains one of the last engineering wannabees to encourage this
  kind of entomological mysticism.  I doubt if this excuse for 
  failure, even as a metaphor, would be accorded the same respectability
  in any other form of engineering.  

  It is no wonder that many of our colleagues in other engineering
  fields regard our efforts and our products as the result of some
  kind of "black art" rather than the well-reasoned fruit of 
  an engineering discipline.   

RD> There are additional quotes that precede the computer age.

  But can you find such a reference in the writings of Ada Byron? :)

  Richard Riehle