eli5: Why do bugs in software exist?

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eli5: Why do bugs in software exist?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The computer does exactly what you’ve told it to. I write in English some of the time, but writing software code is not like writing in English, meaning I’m bad at writing code. A person listening to you will understand what you meant when you’re learning a second language, but the computer does not have the ability to understand that what you’re (accidentally) asking it to do is very silly. Spoken and written languages are complicated, but you don’t need to be exact all the time.

Some “bugs” actually turn out to be very useful features. The standard example in video games is Rocking Jumping. Explosive weapons deal damage to players, the man with the bazooka included. Players who take damage suffer some amount of knockback or force relative to the source of damage. Players learned that they could move in a special way and shoot the wall or ground at a specific distance, gaining an advantage in play against their opponents by trading a rocket and some health for speed and distance and height.

Some bugs are beautiful. When making a lighting engine or landscape, one may forget a negative sign in the code. This may lead to extremely odd effects, which may be beautiful or at least hilarious.

Most bugs are probably not useful or beautiful. Software errors are a significant source of stress/expenses/exposure for governments and companies.

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