90% of bugs are waht?
March 4, 2012 10:30 PM Subscribe
What's the source of this Computer Science quote?
Something like:
"90% of all software bugs are due to typos, 90% of the rest are syntax errors, 90% of those remaining bugs are logic problems, and the rest are hard bugs."
I've known it since the 90s, and it struck me as a pretty profound thing that would be easy to find, probably by Knuth or Brooks or someone, but it's proving very elusive to both Google and this self-taught programmer.
Something like:
"90% of all software bugs are due to typos, 90% of the rest are syntax errors, 90% of those remaining bugs are logic problems, and the rest are hard bugs."
I've known it since the 90s, and it struck me as a pretty profound thing that would be easy to find, probably by Knuth or Brooks or someone, but it's proving very elusive to both Google and this self-taught programmer.
It sounds like a variant of this well known (and imho better) quote:
posted by samj at 4:11 AM on March 5, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by samj at 4:11 AM on March 5, 2012 [2 favorites]
It wasn't Knuth. Knuth doesn't make typos.
posted by scose at 5:26 AM on March 5, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by scose at 5:26 AM on March 5, 2012 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Heh, no, it wasn't a Edison-Pareto-Sturgeon mashup.
posted by rhizome at 12:16 PM on March 5, 2012
posted by rhizome at 12:16 PM on March 5, 2012
I'm another life-long coder (since the early 80s) who has never heard it before and rejects it as crazy talk. Way more than 1% of bugs are logic errors and typos and syntax errors are usually not even bugs, but compile errors. Furthermore, even a "hard bug" still pretty much has to be a "logic error," right?
I've heard samj's quote like 5 million times, by comparison.
posted by Lame_username at 1:13 PM on March 5, 2012
I've heard samj's quote like 5 million times, by comparison.
posted by Lame_username at 1:13 PM on March 5, 2012
I've got 30 years of bit-pushing under my fingers and I've never heard it either. It sounds like a poor recollection of a bastardization.
It doesn't ring true, either. Typos generally never compile so they rarely cause bugs. Syntax errors, by definition, are never going to compile or run regardless of the language so that's never going to cause any bugs either. I don't think I've heard bugs referred to as "hard" as a class. Bugs are classified by severity: critical, minor, etc. Programming problems may be classified as hard-- that usually means NP complete, not at all what a layman calls hard.
posted by chairface at 6:02 PM on March 5, 2012 [2 favorites]
It doesn't ring true, either. Typos generally never compile so they rarely cause bugs. Syntax errors, by definition, are never going to compile or run regardless of the language so that's never going to cause any bugs either. I don't think I've heard bugs referred to as "hard" as a class. Bugs are classified by severity: critical, minor, etc. Programming problems may be classified as hard-- that usually means NP complete, not at all what a layman calls hard.
posted by chairface at 6:02 PM on March 5, 2012 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Well this is certainly a disappointment! I wouldn't have thought I dreamt a quote like this, but perhaps my imagination is more powerful than I ever realized.
posted by rhizome at 12:44 PM on March 6, 2012
posted by rhizome at 12:44 PM on March 6, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:24 AM on March 5, 2012