Writing buggy applications is a cinch--for decades, the world's software developers have been proving that with just about every program they release. Truly interesting bugs, however, are a relatively rare breed. I'm talking about the kind that cause technology products and services to stop working for extended periods, or that prompt them to behave as if they were possessed or harbored grudges against the humans who use them. And even though the bugs themselves usually stem from mundane errors such as typos or faulty math, their symptoms are anything but boring.
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Bizarre Bugs: 9 of the Strangest Software Glitches Ever
READER FEEDBACK
Mutaz Mon, 2009-06-22 10:15
Bill Gates and the president of General Motors have met for lunch, and Bill is going on and on about computer technology. "If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour," says Gates. "Or, you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In either case, the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50. Why haven't you guys kept up?"
The president of GM smiles and says, "Because the federal government won't let us build cars that crash four times a day."
I am not sure if the writer understands the wicked nature of software development, I quote "Leap years may have been around since Julius Caesar invented them in 45 B.C., but software developers still don't seem to understand them".
Such bugs occur not because developers don't understand Leap years, because someone in management thought that adding tons of features to a piece of software that has to be done yesterday is smart, and because Management and Business analysts kept bombarding the developers with changing requirements as the project is being developed.
The reason that software these days is more buggy than ever is because of how dynamic the enviroment is, it's hard to force controls on a process when flexiblity and rapid production is a top priority. Software is just a different animal, it's the nature of the beast.
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