Errors in software have been called "bugs" since at least the 1940s, when Admiral Grace Hopper discovered a moth stuck in a mechanical relay in an early computer at Harvard University. The term has stuck, with a vengeance. Now even end users of software refer to misbehaving software as "buggy" or worse as "bugged." I dislike the term bug. To me, the word bug makes it sound like the error crept into the software from the outside. The code was fine, until the bugs got to it. Or worse, it sounds like the software spoiled somehow—we left it on the shelf too long and it got "buggy". But software doesn't work that way. Computers are highly deterministic. If the software misbehaves, to a first, second, and third approximation it's because the programmer made a mistake. It might be an excusable mistake—software is incredibly complex and can be hard to understand. An innocuous change in module A can cause a catastrophic failure in module B. But...
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