RESOURCES
The Business Bulletin
Where do bugs come from? In popular perception bugs are literally mistakes in software; a result of carelessness from software developers or a lack of testing and QA. Maybe a number needed to be saved to 5 decimal places and instead was only saved to 2 places. So, when a calculation is done later, the numbers don’t match with expected values. Perhaps an algorithm representing a business rule was improperly implemented within the code, so given a particular set of input values the user is returned something unexpected.
We’ve all had that moment of
A fuller definition of a bug is
image or the wrong font on a header.
indignation and frustration using an
anything in your software that causes
It could be serious; perhaps crediting
application where we think ‘If only
a deviation in expected appearance,
the wrong customer account when a
[insert expletive] [insert company
behaviour or output. That deviation
button is clicked.
name] wrote better [insert few more
could be trivial: a misaligned
choice expletives] software and tested it properly!‘.
So is it really all down to mistakes and carelessness on the part of people like me? Well, it’s a bit complicated.
Bugs of complexity A general rule is that the more complex the software, the more intricate the business rules or behaviours, the higher the potential for bugs.
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