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Why Are Software Issues Called “Bugs”?

“Bug" has been used in engineering contexts since the 19th century.

Thomas Edison is known to have referred to bugs as faults or problems in electrical circuits. However, the term became prominently associated with computers and software due to a famous incident involving Rear Admiral Grace Hopper and a moth in the 1940s.

The Moth Incident

In 1947, while working on the Harvard Mark II computer, Grace Hopper and her team encountered a problem. Upon investigating, they found an actual moth causing interference in the computer's hardware. They removed the moth and logged this activity as "debugging the computer."

The term "debugging" became popular in computing circles to refer to the process of identifying and removing errors in code or hardware. Over time, the faults themselves became known as "bugs." In modern computing, "bug" is a ubiquitous term used to refer to errors, flaws, or glitches in software code or hardware components, and "debugging" is the process of fixing those issues.

So, while the term "bug" predates computers, its popular association with computing problems was solidified through historical incidents and the evolution of computer engineering terminology.