There is always at least one bug in a program
by Piotr Firanczyk, Gigaman, 2004
When the first computers saw daylight, programmers appeard with them. These extraordinary
people have got one aim ­ to create useful programs. But programmers are humans too and make
mistakes as we do. Their mistakes are called bugs. When some bugs occur in a program, then many
unexpected problems can happen. But must it go that way? Is there always some bug in a program?
This question isn't so simple because it depends on the following reason: the main of them are
skills of the programmer. If he is smart, he can successfully use his knowledge and knows his job very
well, he shouldn't have difficulties with writing errorless programs. But the larger the program is, the
more possibility of mistakes because one person can't grasp all lines of code. Of course there's nothing
simpler than creating a team of programmers. The supervision of a program­writing will be easier. But
then there appears the following trammel : probably each of them will be writing his own part of the
application. It may turn out at the end of work that the parts won't work correctly together. This
problem happened in the case of Microsoft Windows. The product has dominated operating systems
market very quickly and become the most popular OS, but its functionally has been limited by bugs
which originated from the absence of cooperation between the modules of this system. The Windows is
a very huge program and it's very hard to identify the bug in hundreds of thousands of code lines. All
the time new patches, which are able to fix holes in the system are issued. It seems we can find fewer
bugs in smaller applications. But it isn't true. Every day on websites or in the press we read about
oversights in applications. Many of these applications aren't so huge. They can be really small and
developed by experienced coders. So where do the bugs come from? I think it's a natural process we
can't pass over. This is connected to another question ­ is it bad or good? In my opinion it's rather good
because every mistake or deficiency causes the aggravation of work on it. Many times it leads to new
solutions and ideas. For sure, we can expect new versions of programs. It leads to innovation which
should make us pleased.
So, is there any bug left in a program? Yes, of course, there is one or more left. Probably not
only one. It seems to be unavoidable. Do we know where it comes from? No, we don't. But if someone
asks us that existence of bugs is bad, can we just say it is? On one hand bugs create problems and
wreck our nerves, but on the other hand it causes continuous evolution of software. Choosing progress,
instead saying 'there is always at least one bug in a program', I can say there must be at least that one.