Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2004-02-08 13:28:12 by Roland Stens []
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Bug
An unwanted and unintended property of a system, especially one that causes a malfunction.
Synonyms:
defect, anomaly, issue etc.
Well, if you've ever wondered why people call computer errors "bugs" it actually did have a meaning back in the day...
Back some odd years ago, when they first started making computers a woman by the name of
Grace Hopper, helped invent the "UNIVAC 1" (and COBOL). One of the first computers. Inside this computer (this was when computers were the size of a room) there were vacuum tubes going throughout it
One day, the computer was messed up... and they went in and checked out the vacuum tubes and there was a moth stuck in the tube, and that was making the computer malfunction. At that point and after they had trouble with bugs getting caught in these tubes, so whenever there was a problem they referred to them as "bugs" because usually it was actually caused by a bug.