Bugs!?
Since i start in development i have had a question in mind, why the f*ck program errors are called Bugs? It seems that it’s for a whimsical reason as it’s said on How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python:
For whimsical reasons, programming errors are called bugs…
But the question finally has been answered!!! The firsts computer errors, given the size of the firsts computers, where caused by real Bugs interfering on the circuits and make the computers do unexpected operations.
nxvl @ May 7, 2008
If I remember rightly… the first “million dollar question” on the American version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” was what kind of bug computer bugs were named after.
They got their name when Grace Hopper found a moth jamming up a relay or something.
I am feeling old. I thought everyone knew that story.
The term “bug” was in use before Hopper pulled that moth. Thomas Edison used “bug” to describe hardware errors. In the days when programs were sorta written in hardware (rewiring was a common way of “programming” computers), it made perfect sense to use the word.
Thanks for the link to my page above.
I have a few other links on that page noting that “bug” was used BEFORE that event.
JSH
[...] Nicolas Valcárcel posted a nice little post on Planet Ubuntu about the origin of the term. He writes [...]