Bug (engineering)

This article is about engineering defects in general. For defects in computer software, see software bug. For defects in computer hardware, see hardware bug.

In engineering, a bug is a design defect in an engineered system that causes an undesired result.

Although used exclusively to describe a technical issue, bug is a non-technical term; applicable without technical understanding of the system.

The term bug applies exclusively to a system that is (human) designed; not to a natural system; and that the issue is within the influence of human control. For example, humans have faults but not bugs, and a server crash due to natural disaster is not a bug.

In addition to or instead of defect, some use: error, flaw or fault.

Engineered systems is a broad classification encompassing but not limited to: software, computer hardware, electronics, circuitry and machinery.

The undesirable result can be classified and described many ways including: intermittent, transient, glitch, crash or hang.

Since desirability is subjective, what is considered undesirable to one may be considered desirable to another; even a useful feature.

History

The Middle English word bugge is the basis for the terms bugbear and bugaboo as terms used for a monster.[1]

The term bug to describe a defect has been engineering jargon since at least as far back as the 1870s – long before electronic computers and computer software. For instance, Thomas Edison wrote the following words in a letter to an associate in 1878:

It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise—this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs"—as such little faults and difficulties are called—show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached.[2]

In a comic strip printed in a 1924 telephone industry journal, a naive character hears that a man has a job as a "bug hunter" and gives a gift of a backscratcher. The man replies "don't you know that a 'bug hunter' is just a nickname for a repairman?"[3]

Baffle Ball, the first mechanical pinball game, was advertised as being "free of bugs" in 1931.[4]

Problems with military gear during World War II were referred to as bugs (or glitches).[5]

In the 1940 film, Flight Command, a defect in a piece of direction-finding gear is called a bug.^[citation needed]

In a book published in 1942, Louise Dickinson Rich, speaking of a powered ice cutting machine, said, "Ice sawing was suspended until the creator could be brought in to take the bugs out of his darling."[6]

Isaac Asimov used the term bug to relate to issues with a robot in his short story "Catch That Rabbit", published in 1944.

A page from the Harvard Mark II electromechanical computer's log, featuring a dead moth that was removed from the device

Computer pioneer and rear admiral, Grace Hopper, popularized a story about a moth that caused a problem in an early electromechanical computer.[7] While Hopper was working on the Mark II and Mark III as Harvard faculty in about 1947, operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The moth was removed from the mechanism and taped in a log book with the note "First actual case of bug being found." [8] Reportedly, the operators, including William "Bill" Burke, later of the Naval Weapons Laboratory, Dahlgren, Virginia, [9] were familiar with the engineering term and probably making a joke by conflating the two meanings of bug (biological and defect). Although probably a joke, the story indicates that the term was commonly used in the computer field at that time.[10] [11][12][13] The log book, complete with moth, is part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.[12]

The related term debug also appears to predate its usage in computing: the Oxford English Dictionary's etymology of the word contains an attestation from 1945, in the context of aircraft engines.[14]

"It's not a bug, it's a feature"

Since bug implies undesirable behavior, calling a behavior a bug is subjective. Behavior which is considered a bug by some may be considered a useful feature by others, hence a common phrase is "It's not a bug, it's a feature" (INABIAF).[15] This quip is recorded in The Jargon File dating to 1975 but dates to 1971 when PDP-8 programmer Sandra Lee Harris at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) made the distinction between issues to be fixed in the code for DEC's FOCAL interpreter and those to be documented or clarified in the user manual.[16]

Such behavior might be explicitly communicated to users, or might remain an undocumented feature.

References

1. Computerworld staff (September 3, 2011). "Moth in the machine: Debugging the origins of 'bug'". Computerworld. Archived from the original on August 25, 2015.
2. Edison to Puskas, 13 November 1878, Edison papers, Edison National Laboratory, U.S. National Park Service, West Orange, N.J., cited in Hughes, Thomas Parke (1989). American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970. Penguin Books. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-14-009741-2.
3. Cy Meyn, Hattie the Hello Girl, The Mountain States Monitor Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Jan, 1924), Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Co.; page 34, bottom.
4. "Baffle Ball". Internet Pinball Database. (See image of advertisement in reference entry)
5. "Modern Aircraft Carriers are Result of 20 Years of Smart Experimentation". Life. June 29, 1942. p. 25. Archived from the original on June 4, 2013. Retrieved November 17, 2011.
6. Dickinson Rich, Louise (1942), We Took to the Woods, JB Lippincott Co, p. 93, LCCN 42024308, OCLC 405243, archived from the original on March 16, 2017.
7. FCAT NRT Test, Harcourt, March 18, 2008
8. "Log Book With Computer Bug". americanhistory.si.edu. Retrieved 2024-08-16.
9. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol 22 Issue 1, 2000
10. James S. Huggins. "First Computer Bug". Jamesshuggins.com. Archived from the original on August 16, 2000. Retrieved September 24, 2012.
11. "Bug Archived March 23, 2017, at the Wayback Machine", The Jargon File, ver. 4.4.7. Retrieved June 3, 2010.
12. "Log Book With Computer Bug Archived March 23, 2017, at the Wayback Machine", National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
13. "The First "Computer Bug", Naval Historical Center. But note the Harvard Mark II computer was not complete until the summer of 1947.
14. Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society. 49, 183/2, 1945 "It ranged ... through the stage of type test and flight test and 'debugging' ..."
15. Nicholas Carr. "'IT'S NOT A BUG, IT'S A FEATURE.' TRITE—OR JUST RIGHT?". Wired.
16. FOCAL Programming Manual for PDP-8, PDP-8/S, PDP-8/I, LAB-8, LINC-8 (PDF). Digital Equipment Corporation. 1968. DEC-08-AJAB-D.