What Are Computer Bugs And How Do You Deal With Them ?

Computer bugs are essentially what makes a computer malfunction, in anyway, it is mostly a software error, an instructional error that when  found, can be fixed. They are also design flaws found on a computer system. There are documents dating back to the 17th CC that have described system flaws as bugs.

In this article, we will not be dealing with wild cards that have in trying to improve system security ended up creating more flaws, more individuals who deliberately target software soft-bellies and vulnerabilities of computer system. It will be covering what can safely be termed outright catastrophe, things that actually make things go wrong. Thus, we will begin with the spotify bug. Even though this bug has been around for nearly 2 years, it is still finding a way of “killing” system. Basically the bug attacks hard drives with gigabytes of junk data per day hiring out the hard drives. The problem was traced to a vacuum process (which is a digital equivalent of vacuum sealing since it is meant to repackage data to save space) on a drive. This involves buildings new files to maximise space. The problem was spotify was creating this files on a basis that generally too quick. Say once every few minutes, which when added up generated gigabytes of information. Though it was not filling up the hard drive, it was just over writing the same data. This particularly creates an issue for SSDS as over a very long period of time SSDS lose the ability to save data through wear and tear though spotify desktop eventually released a patch with data bug fix, it created much issues for users.

If you are using an older model of any system in a newer system, it is better to always test the system over and over to prevent data flaw.

There is a story of AT & T (a telecommunication company in the USA) in the 1990s, AT & T customers discovered they could not make long distance calls. It so happened that the company’s 4 ESSS long – distance switches kept rebooting in sequence. It turned out that there was an obscure fault in its new software bugs that created this glitch. One could go on and on about stories on software bugs that created much issues that it at times led to deaths.  (See the ‘Therae 25 Medical accelerator disaster and the multi-data systems of the cobaly-60 overdoses.

While it seems easier to get stuck in a bug, it becomes more difficult do remove a bug from the system, essentially because one has to get to the root of the bug in order to root it out. Thus fixing a computer can be a whole lot of work, especially software bugs. If one can possibly recreate the bug itself, it became easier thus, the questions to ask will be

1. What was the user doing?
2. What were they expecting?
3. What did they come up with?

At immediate glance, one can immediately see the problem this will create, apparently the question start with “where is the person who started all these? Luckily, if one is in luck the bug will in this era of the internet create an error message that can be checked out online which may give a clue as to what to do precisely to get one’s system back. I use the word “may” because the internet may actually be unable to provide a solution.

This leads to the next stage of actually testing, and trying to rewrite especially if the program is deeply ingrained in the software, while running a debugging tool.