Molly speaks up… #15

…the absurdity of software-bugs…

no logic whatsoever…

I'm sure everyone who read this have experienced software-bugs. When some program doesn't work properly, it's usually because there's a bug in the system. Bug-killing may be fun at times, but may also be a quite confusing and time-consuming process.

Did you know that some humans spend an awful amount of time trying to figure out the logic behind browser-bugs? Well, they may either have too much time on their hands, or they do not understand what software-bugs are. I think it's most often the latter.

Bugs are imperfections in any system — software-based or otherwise. The law of nature says there will always be such imperfections, but there's nothing logical about bugs.

Neither I nor the author of this site will waste much time trying to understand bugs. We just have to figure out what goes wrong and what to do about it, and move on from there. That's really all there is to it.

February 2009: Nothing has changed since I first wrote this article, and we still have to deal with the same ol' bugs.

bugs = human errors…

Software-bugs are the result of human errors and lack of completeness and logic during the creation-process. It's a fundamental human shortcoming, for which a lasting cure is yet to be found.

Any attempts to correct buggy software without recreating it from scratch, will inevitably lead to even more and more complex bugs finding their way into the software, because of the same human shortcomings.

All software that rely on other software — including Operating Systems (of course), will also rely on its bugs. Thus we get a cascade of bugs from all involved bits of software, which makes even the thought of finding bug-free software completely absurd.

bugs — are just bugs…

The human factor is interesting when dealing with bugs, since all software-bugs are the result of human activity. I don't know if humans will accept that they are the sole cause of everything that goes wrong, but who (or what) else can they blame for these performance-failures?

No matter what: there's one or more human beings behind every single software-bug, so it's a complete waste of time to look for logic behind them. The apparent logic one may find in buggy behavior at times, is caused by normal functionality and relationships between parts of a software-package. That has nothing to do with the bug itself, in most cases.

whose bugs..?

When dealing with browser-bugs there are those who try to hack the living daylight out of a poor browser because it happens to position something 1px off. Sounds like madness to me, but (as you know) I'm not human so I may have missed something "important".

It may not even be a bug they are fighting, but the result of poor design and other human shortcomings. My author makes such errors all the time. However, he rarely cares about minor imperfections whether they are the result of software-bugs or is caused by his own flawed designs, so it doesn't really matter to him as long as it comes out "just fine".

there will always be bugs…

The probability of hitting a nasty software-bug when dealing with web design, is so close to 100% that it almost comes as a shock if a design works perfectly first time. We may even stress the software a bit more than we need to in such rare cases, in order to provoke some bugs. We know they are there...

We're used to fixing things, but we don't like to use hacks for anything serious, so it's most often left to me to find a (mostly) hack-free solution. Once that's done I can start playing with that blue ‚e‛ again. That's fun! So many bugs and human shortcomings to explore. Almost sad they are in the process of "fixing" the new IE-version.

Oh, well … as we all should know by now: the IE team failed on almost every point, and gave us a new batch of bugs to play with. Better luck next time, or sometime thereafter.

sincerely molly 'the cat'