Bug

Every software engineer has encountered his little guy. He pops his head around whenever an error occurs or the program isn't behaving like expected. Of course, Bug never means ill... but he does like to cause chaos and bring headaches to his favourite people which is why he loves to hang around projects and be a "helping hand".

I know, most people don't really like it when they find me hiding in their software, but really I'm here to help! I can teach you many things too, especially things you should do to avoid me.

Oh, and why do I actually look like a bug? Well... funny story...

Moth

_{Image contains moth! Hover over to see.}

The First Computer Bug by Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA., 1988., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The very first computer related bug dates back to 1947. At Harvard University, people were working on one of the first computers, the Harvard Mark II and Mark III performing calculations. These computers primarily consisted of circuit boards with components soldered directly onto them.
One day, the computer was malfunctioning — the output of the calculation they had started did not match the expected result. After a couple hours of searching and looking through the machine, one engineer found the culprit. A moth had managed to fly into the computer and decided that it was a good spot to chill for a while. Unbeknownst to the moth, it had chosen a seating spot where electricity would flow through the metal points.
While the charge wasn't all that much, it was enough to fry the moth to bits. Now unable to move, the two metal points were still connected through the moth which short-circuited the system leading to the wrong result.

Rest in Peace, little Moth.
Thanks to you, the term bug has stuck to refer to errors thrown by software or hardware or them not behaving as expected.

Family

Bit
Byte
Nibble

Current Location

In a dark corner of new and old software

Favourite Joke

99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs, you take one down and patch it around, 125 little bugs in the code.