A Taxonomy of Software Bugs

List of unusual software bugs:

• A schrödinbug (named after Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment) is a bug that manifests only after someone reading source code or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked in the first place, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed.
• A bohrbug (named after the Bohr atom model) is a bug that manifests itself consistently under a well-defined (but possibly unknown) set of conditions.
• A mandelbug (named after fractal innovator Benoît Mandelbrot) is a computer bug whose causes are so complex that its behavior appears chaotic or even non-deterministic.
• A heisenbug (named after the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) is a computer bug that disappears or alters its characteristics when an attempt is made to study it.
• The phase of the moon (i.e. phase of the moon bug) is sometimes cited as a silly parameter on which a bug might depend, such as due to exasperation after trying to isolate the true cause.
• The alpha particle bug’s name derives from the historical phenomenon of soft errors caused by alpha particle radiation.

God bless you, Wikipedia.

(via kottke)

Mike Karlesky (64 Posts)