Sunday, June 21, 2009

Bugs

A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect or unexpected result). Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design.
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There are various reasons for not fixing bugs:
  • The developers often don't have time or it is not economical to fix all non-severe bugs.
  • The bug could be fixed in a new version or patch that is not yet released.
  • The changes to the code required to fix the bug would be large, and would bring with them the chance of introducing other bugs into the system.
  • Users may be relying on the undocumented, buggy behavior; it may introduce a breaking change.
  • It's "not a bug". A misunderstanding has arisen between expected and provided behavior
Given the above, it is often considered impossible to write completely bug-free software of any real complexity. So bugs are categorized by severity, and low-severity non-critical bugs are tolerated, as they do not affect the proper operation of the system for most users.
Wikipedia Software Bug



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