What is a Bug? A software bug is nothing more than a simple error or failure that can occur in computer program systems. Which will eventually result in unexpected and incorrect behavior from what was intended by your developer.

Many failures of this type can indeed be more difficult to predict and can even result in much bigger problems. For example, loss of performance, virtual crimes and theft of information and data.

So it's a logic failure, which occurs when the programming language encounters some conflict. And this can cause programs to stop running correctly.

Bugs can have various origins like, arithmetic, logic, syntax, multi-threading, features, interface and much more. So, in order to recognize them and thus avoid their appearance, many companies carry out debugging and many tests.

We believe that you can understand what a bug is right. Now let's know a little more about the origin of the term. Let's go!

What is your origin?

The word “Bug” is English, whose literal translation is “Insect”. This word was already used in the 1870s by engineers to portray defects in works. And look, at that time there were no electronics, computers and software to be buggy.

There are also records of the term to describe some mechanical machines that did not work properly. Just to give you an idea, even the great inventor Tomas Edson sent letters to friends talking about the subject.

So with all this the term was transported to the universe of computers, this was in the 1940s. When Grace Hopper, a computer scientist, was working with the Mark II computer at Harvard.

So after some time trying to find a fault in the machine, his collaborators found a moth trapped in the relay. At that time no one took note of it.

But as time went by, so the story began to be told differently, being treated as the first case of Bug within the computing universe.

Even the National Museum of American History, which is in the United States, has kept under 7 keys the record book of events dated December 9, 1947. The great researcher William Bill Burke even placed the moth found and wrote it down in the book as the being the first real house ever found.

Bugs and vulnerability for pcs:

Now that you know what it is, how the term came about so let's talk about a not so good problem they bring. Especially if they are linked to failures and security issues.

Many hackers may want to take advantage of this vulnerability in systems and end up committing crimes, such as stealing sensitive information such as credit cards, passwords and much more.

Usually when hackers take advantage of bugs, they spread a lot of viruses and malware together, which can also end up harming many people's computers. Because of this, large companies develop programs to seek to correct possible flaws in the system's security as quickly as possible.

beta tests:

Nowadays, all software that is released on the market goes through a series of beta tests, this serves to detect flaws and remove them. Testing is usually done when all features are in place, but the program is not yet unstable.

Many of the beta testing phases are done by employees of QA departments. But there are also beta releases, which are the users themselves who carry out the tests.

These beta release professionals are usually public people and also some private institutions, because the greater the number of people testing the better. Thus, the company receives numerous feedbacks and resolves anything that is buggy more quickly.

It is important to point out that many types of programs remain in a state of perpetual beta testing, where new features are introduced with each new release. But they never arrive in a final version.

The Google company does this often, particularly with Gmail and Google News, they've been in a state of perpetual beta since 2000. They were in beta testing until 2009, then they left.

This excellent technique allows developers able to wait longer, before taking responsibility for possible problems and thus offering full support to the programs.

Bug fixing software:

The process of finding and fixing bugs in computing is known as debugging. There are a huge number of techniques and strategies for doing this, from analyzing flow control to memory dumps.

As mentioned earlier by us, the term debugging emerged along with the first uses of the word bug to refer to computers.

Automated tools for finding problems are known as debuggers or debuggers. Know that in this type of software it is very common to execute the program code inside the virtual machine. So that the faults that are within that system are found.

Meet the most popular debuggers:

• Eclipse – Java
• Arm DDT – C++
• Valgrind – Linux
• Firefox JavaScript Debugger – JavaScript
• WinDbg -Microsoft Windows
• Xpediter -Mainframe

Famous cases:

Many computer bugs, due to media attention, are remembered even today by many people. One of the most famous is certainly the Y2K (known as the Millennium Bug). We'll talk about it already, as they deserve honorable or disgraceful mentions.

The main one was the rocket called Ariane 5, which was launched by CNES (French Space Agency) on 06/4/1996. The Ariane 5 rocket exploded 30 seconds after launch, causing approximately $370 million in damage. And luckily no one was hurt, as it was just a test and there was no one on board. check out the explosion video.

The reason for the explosion? A computer bug, where the error was in converting 64-bit data, which in turn is much more complex when compared to 16-bit data.

This problem is known as Integrate Overflow, which means Integral Extravasation. Which in turn consists of creating a number greater than that supported by the 16-bit variable.

So in the year 2013, Chris Reynolds was startled to wake up, he had become the richest man in the world. This is all due to a bug in the PayPal software. He woke up with $ 92,233,720,368,547,800 quadrillion dollars in the account.

It's even funny because Mr. Reynolds even if for a short period of time was simply 1 million times richer than the Mexican Carlos Slim. Who at the time was the richest man in the world, with his fortune of $ 67 billion dollars.

So as soon as the error was detected by the PayPal payment system, the operation was quickly reversed and Mr. Reynolds returned to normal.

What is the Millennium Bug?

The Millennium Bug, also known as the Y2K Bug, was a bug where it was believed that at the turn of the millennium, all computers would start displaying the date January 1, 1900 instead of the year 2000.

All this due to software from the 60's using only 2 digits to represent the year value. This saved memory space and money of course. In this way, only the “60” was registered, for example, with the “19” that would appear in front of it being implicit.

So over the years many programs were being updated to new formats, which in turn supported the year 2000 and thus solved the problem.

But at the end of the 1990s, it was found that many companies, especially large ones, had not yet updated their software to deal with this situation.

And to make things even more complicated, there was the system Bios, which most of the time only used two digits to show the date. And that ended up resulting in a great deal of concern about the financial system. Could the defect affect him as well and what would be the consequences?

If the date were then automatically set to January 1900, the interest would become negative, and whoever owed money would then become the debtor. And the tickets? As for those who, in turn, were due for the first month of the new millennium, those would then be 100 years behind.

How was the Millennium Bug fixed?

We only know that in the end nothing happened, everything that was predicted did not happen. No catastrophe or tragedy happened because of the scheduled date of the system.

Even though nothing happened, it was clear that it was a race just for a general update of the programs was promoted, which generated a lot of expenses all over the world.

Not to mention that at the turn of the millennium many people, and even companies, had already bought newer and more modern computers, already with support for the year 2000.

Some small incidents ended up occurring, such as in Spain where some parking meters showed errors in their operation.

In France, the weather forecast for January 1, 19,100 was given by the National Institute of Meteorology, this announcement was made in real time on their own website. And in Austria a few machines that validate bus tickets also stopped working.

Conclusion:

Now you know what a Bug is, know that they represent from small errors to major security problems, which can be problematic. But they can also come up with funny and fun stories like Mr. Reynolds who woke up rolling in cash.

But either way, they are problems that software developers try to avoid as much as possible. And it is for this purpose that the beta tests that we mentioned earlier are promoted.

Because with beta tests you get a huge amount of feedback before launching the product in its final version, and that it is stable for the market.

That's why our recommendation is: always keep your programs and your operating system up to date. This is very important as these simple upgrades often fix many issues and security holes. In addition to keeping your programs much more secure.

So that's it, we hope you enjoyed our article, let's stop here. And now that you know what a bug is, try to stay away from them. A big hug and success ?