Comments on: No More Bugs

By: Fred Murray

Fred Murray — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:43:51 +0000

I think you pulling the wrong piece of string on this one. Bug is a fine word. I think your suggestion that people don’t worry about “bugs” is wrong and similarly your suggestion that people would worry more about “defects” is wrong.
Cheers,
Fred.

By: Steve Jackson

Steve Jackson — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 21:38:57 +0000

I don’t think defect is synonymous with bug. Bug is a very loose term that can range from memory dump to mispelled string. If you’re buying a diamond and it has an imperfection, no biggie. If it has a defect, it’s near worthless. Same thing with manufacturing. I used to work on an auto production line. A defective stack of blanks is totally worthless. But problems of a lesser degree can be “reworked”.
If people equate bug to defect, then no, nothing would change. But if defect signifies a serious problem, then I think changes could take place. As soon as a tab order bug becomes a defect, the power of “defect” is lost.

By: Dale Emery

Dale Emery — Wed, 25 May 2005 05:28:56 +0000

Are bug and defect synonyms? Here’s my test: Are you willing to switch?
If you would be willing to switch from bug to defect, then I’ll accept that you see them as synonyms. If you aren’t willing to switch, there must be a distinction that you care deeply about, and therefore you are not using the words synonymously after all. So what is the distinction that is so important that you won’t switch?
What to call the act of removing defects? I like either correction or repair.

By: Shanan Holm

Shanan Holm — Tue, 24 May 2005 02:27:47 +0000

A thought – even though the distinction doesn’t really exist – is that bug and defect could be treated in a similar way to the IT Infrastructure Library’s “incident” and “problem”.
Bug: a behaviour that deviates from an expected result
Defect: a problem which causes one or more bugs (ie a code defect).

By: Ian Bren

Ian Bren — Mon, 23 May 2005 08:29:32 +0000

Some points – a defect may not be caused by a coding error – it could be a requirements error or a documentation error. Once the cause is identified then it can be catagorised correctly – it may be coding error.
As for “bug” See http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/bug.html for the fokelore around the origin of this in computers.

By: Carlton Nettleton

Carlton Nettleton — Fri, 20 May 2005 20:57:49 +0000

I think this is an instance of potato or potatoe.
IME, trying to “force” people to change their vocabulary (bug vs. defect) is generally met with a lot of resistence. Word choice is an extremely personal decision and making someone choose one word over another is trying to force people to not only say what you want, but think what you want.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 20 May 2005 20:48:00 +0000

Now software development shares very little with manufacturing. However, if we think of “defects” as bugs (wasted resources), then we choose to be serious in our erradication of them. Each “defect”, or bug, eats into our profits because they are wasted resources and that is a “bad thing”. Now the bugs might be the result of bad specifications, poor quality control, sloppy process or bad development practices. In any case, we can identify why the bug escaped into the real world and address the problem in the correct place.
IMO, the meaning of that paragraph is unchanged.

By: Rimantas

Rimantas — Fri, 20 May 2005 20:45:03 +0000

First, zero defects in manufaturing would be economical disaster, i.e.
there is some optimal level and trying
to improve beyond that would cost improportionaly lots of money.
Second, sowtware development shares a lot with manufacturing. And the same goes for bugfixing: there are bugs not worth fixing (sure, I’d rather like them not to exist).
Joel Spolsky has an excellent article:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/fog0000000014.html
And third: changed wording sometimes indeed puts things into the different perspective. But not in this case.

By: Carlton Nettleton

Carlton Nettleton — Fri, 20 May 2005 04:47:06 +0000

Changing the word is changing your perspective. In manufacturing, the goal is to reduce the number of defective products to zero. A defective product is a waste of resources and eats into the profits, aka the company’s “bottom line”. Of course you can never reach that, but that is why quality programs like Six Sigma exist – try to minimize your variation (some say your defects) as much as possible
Now software development shares very little with manufacturing. However, if we think of “bugs” as defects (wasted resources), then we choose to be serious in our erradication of them. Each “bug”, or defect, eats into our profits because they are wasted resources and that is a “bad thing”. Now the defects might be the result of bad specifications, poor quality control, sloppy process or bad development practices. In any case, we can identify why the defect escaped into the real world and address the problem in the correct place.

By: james gunn

james gunn — Fri, 20 May 2005 02:11:48 +0000

I’ve heard of “defect-prevention” activities, but not “bug-prevention” activities. Perhaps the language _does_ shape the thinking here.