A bug is what?

Sometimes, the furrow of the Internet, you can find the word "bug". What does it denote and what is the etymology of the word? You can find answers to these questions in this article.

A bug is what?

The word "bug" comes from the English language. In English, a bug (pronounced "bug") is a bug or a bug. This word is used mainly among programmers, testers and gamers. But what does it mean?

A bug is a discrepancy between the technical task of the program and the actual behavior of the system. As a result of this inconsistency, software can not fulfill the function conceived by the developer. In simple terms, a bug is a bug that occurs due to a flaw in the source code of the program.

Origin of the word

Perhaps now we should talk about the etymology of this word. A bug is a professionalism that is most often used in the environment of programmers. There are several variants of the origin of this word.

If you believe the legend, this professionalism appeared back in 1945. This happened when scientists from Harvard University were testing a new computer called Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. The device refused to work, and the reason for this was a tiny moth that got stuck between the contacts. The insect was removed from the computer and plugged into a special technical diary. Near the moth was the accompanying inscription "First actual case of bug being found", which translates as "The first case in practice when a bug was found." After this funny story, the word "bug" also became used in the meaning of "error".

There is also a version that this professionalism appeared long before the tests of the computing device. Some believe that the term "bug" owes its origin to the famous inventor Thomas Edison. According to legend, Edison was looking for a cockroach in his phonograph, but he was not there. The bug was in the device itself.

The next version says that the word "bug" appeared during the Second World War. Then under this term meant a problem with radar technology.

The word "bug" began to spread quickly. In the 80-90s only professional programmers used this professionalism. With the advent of the Internet, the word began to be actively exaggerated. Now the "bug" in its vocabulary is used by everyone who has at least the slightest relation to computer technology (gamers, ordinary Internet users, etc.). Therefore now it can be safely called a part of Internet slang.

Game bugs

Bugs are not only in programs, they are quite often found in games. The game's bug is a developer's fault, because of which the gameplay is not going the way it was originally intended. In the history of the game industry, thousands of projects have been played. We will talk about the most famous and entertaining in this section.

Perhaps the most amusing project in the last few years is Assassin's Creed: Unity. Projects "Yubisoft" have never been famous for their optimization, but Unity is a real encyclopedia of bugs. Sometimes the characters are in very strange and unnatural poses, fall into textures, pass through walls or simply hang. That only there is a bug that in a matter of hours flew all the Internet (the characters just lost faces, because of what they looked pretty eerie). Even Yubisoft itself admitted its mistake, issued a patch that fixed bugs, and compensated the buyers for the damage.

Sometimes players perceive bugs as features, features of the game. This happened with a mega-successful series of games called Mortal Kombat. In the first part of the game there was a bug that repainted Scorpio (one of the main characters of the game) in red. In this case, the hero's name was replaced with the Error Macro error message. The players felt that this flaw is the developers' idea, and the red ninja is an additional secret character. Ed Boon (the creator of the MC) liked this idea, and in the subsequent part he added the game to the game under the name Ermak (short for the same Error Macro).

How to protect yourself from bugs?

In order to remove bugs from their projects, developers hire special people who are called testers. The task of the tester is to find all the flaws in the program, the game or any other software.

But not always testers find bugs, and sometimes a couple of flaws still seeps into the final version of the project. In this case, all the hope for users who can send a special letter with a description of the error is a bug-report. This will help improve the final product. In addition, large companies are well rewarded for finding bugs in their products. For example, as a reward for finding significant bugs in your browser, Google is ready to give $ 15,000.