There are two types of people who use computers: those who love to tinker with the cute little beasts and those who, for some unknown reason, regard computers purely as tools that should do a job and that's the end of it.

If you belong to the latter group, you probably regard bugs in computer software as exasperating and time wasting. You're also likely to be amazed at how a whole industry can get away with producing defective products, and then make purchasers pay to buy a new version of the product that is supposedly somewhat less flawed.

If you belong to the former group, you'll know that this view of computer software misses the point entirely.

Bugs are simply a part of computing life. In fact, I'd be devastated if consumers banded together and demanded that there should be no more bugs. Where would that leave us?

It'd leave us with ultra long development cycles for products. We moan now about too-frequent upgrades to software, but give me the yearly upgrade over the five-yearly one any day.

It would leave us with incredibly expensive software. Getting bugs out of software is harder than writing the code in the first place, so bug-free software will come at a high price.

It would leave us with software development that's far less adventurous and far less responsive to users' needs. Companies would lock down the feature set in products at an early stage to ensure they had plenty of time for the debugging cycle.

It'd leave us with very little software at all.

If you've ever tried your hand at writing computer code you'll know that even in a three-line program there's room for errors. I've rarely seen a program containing more than a few thousand lines of code that doesn't have some errors in it. Even if the program itself is beautifully and correctly written, it has to interface with an operating system that will definitely have bugs (doesn't matter which operating system – they all have them) and with other software and hardware that doesn't always behave predictably.

So, how likely is it that complex software such as Lotus', Corel's and Microsoft's flagship suite products or Netscape Navigator or Novell's NetWare is ever going to be produced bug free?

While we tend to hear mostly about the bugs in high-profile products such as the various integrated suites, in fact it's the big four application developers who are the only ones who have committed serious money to quality-centred development and meticulous software testing. They aim to remove 95 percent of all software defects in their products. If you're thinking "But that leaves five percent of the defects waiting for me" be glad you're doing so well: most applications ship with as much as 65 percent of the code untested.

Of course, some bugs are unbearable. Bugs that scramble your data big time are hard to defend. And companies have been successfully sued for software that doesn't perform as advertised. This is as it should be: companies should make every reasonable effort to ensure their software works well, delivers the goods, and has no flaws that could harm their customers. In some industries, such as aviation, medicine and engineering, more stringent requirements make sense. To this extent, we should expect and demand debugged software that performs up to expectations.

But let's leave it at that. If you want to play it safe with software, stick with older versions and older platforms tested over time. You have tens of thousands of programs to choose from.

But don't bitch about bugs. Bugs are a natural by-product of an industry that is innovative, go-getting, and exciting. Just look at the uptake of beta (and pre-beta) software on the Web and you'll see that to millions of users the promise of new functionality and new technology is worth a little dance with software flaws.

© 1997  Rose Vines

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