What is bug?

What Does bug Mean

Many words are used on a daily basis in our language and, however, they are not accepted by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) . The entity's dictionary , however, is updated over time and it is likely that a term that is not recognized today will become part of a future edition.

In the case of bug , it is a concept used by all those who have knowledge in the field of computing . This English word, whose literal translation is "bug" , is used to name the errors that occur in a computer program .
A bug is generated in the programming or design of the software and, at some point, it manifests itself to the user. Some common bugs are the inclusion of variables that were not initialized at the precise moment, the bad indexing of the tables in a database, the creation of an infinite loop , the use of fonts that are difficult to read or the choice of colors that confuse users.

The usual thing is that the programming language typifies the possible bugs so that, in this way, the programmer can solve the errors in a simple way. In general, languages organize bugs according to whether they are an error at the time of program execution or a compilation error .
There is even a specific type of software whose function is to warn and solve bugs. These programs are known as debuggers or, in our language, as debuggers . What a debugger does is analyze the program code and debug it, erasing every error it detects.
The term debugger is also used to give a name to the role that a programmer fulfills within a company with similar objectives to the programs just mentioned, but with a much greater depth, complexity and potential, since it is not only dedicated to detecting bugs , but to propose suitable solutions and, in the best of cases, to correct them. The task of a debugger is far from easy, especially when it has to analyze tens of thousands of lines of code that were created by various people, in different parts of the world, and with whom they have no direct contact.
As shocking as it is for a person who has no relation to the world of programming, this painting is the daily work scene of many brave people . Finding a bug, on the other hand, is not always easy. The most benevolent appear following a fixed sequence of steps, so that it is possible to define them and cause the error as many times as necessary to understand what causes it and study potential solutions; however, in certain cases it is not possible to find such a recipe and detection becomes a real nightmare.

One of the reasons that certain errors arise following a specific path and others do not, is that the former arise as a result of a less complex series of events, generally due to a simple lack of attention in the design or programming phase . For example, it is common in video games for a bug to occur that prevents the player from continuing to advance if he decides to interrupt the normal flow of events and does something that the designers did not believe possible or earlier than expected; In this case, and especially thanks to communication through social networks, the developers are expected to publish a patch that will solve the problem.
However, if the bug appears only if a certain number of variables have reached a series of very specific and difficult to obtain values, which depend on various issues, it is likely that a very small number of people will detect it and cannot explain what they have. made to find it, thus making it difficult to correct it.