The First Famous Software Bug
I’m sure many of you are familiar with this story from back in the days 
when a computer took up two parking spaces, but Todd Dailey over at Wired ran a great piece today about this date in 1947. It was on this date 62 years ago that the operators of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator discovered the first computer bug (ok, it was a moth, but I still say that good testing would have found it!).
Wired commemorates this special date by listing a few of the more software slip-ups from years past.
1988 The Morris internet worm, the first widespread worm, shuts down thousands of Internet-connected computers due to a programming error on the part of Robert Morris. Morris was attempting to map the internet, but an error caused the worm to crash the computers it connected to instead.
1993 The Denver Airport’s automatic luggage handling system fails to launch on time, leading to its eventual full shutdown in 2005. The failure of the software led to a lot of deep thought on how software is created.
2003 Northeast Blackout, caused in part by a race condition in the control room software, but also due to cascading failures in multiple systems.
You can read about more famous bugs in this 2005 Wired story.
It makes you wonder… what bugs, viruses, hacks and privacy gaps will we be talking about when we look back on 2009? If you’ve got a favorite bug — past or present — drop a note in the comments below.
My favorite bugs are the ones the get left in because of the following….and we have all heard it….
“Cannot reproduce on my system” (the developer is working on his desk top and I am testing on an integrated system…..well, duh!)
“No one would ever do that” – (I just did)
“No one should ever do that” – (Did you tell them that?)
“That is a non-production test condition”. (But it is possible to create the condition….so shouldn’t you get something better than a system 404 error?)
We don’t have time for negative testing….we would be at this all day!!