h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is always One More Bug.

In fact I read somewhere that in a typical program there will be one (probably very minor) bug per 1000 lines of *well-debugged* code... not a problem in a small program, but Windows 2000 is expected to contain well over a million lines of code (quoting from memory here, folks ) - and hence will probably contain thousands of bugs...

And somehow, I don't find this all that difficult to believe.

Another irrefutible law of programming, applying to C and probably some others, is that you will *always* regret not checking the length of a string before you deal with it - it doesn't matter *how* improbable it is that someone'll have a name containing over 100 characters; it'll happen. It's just a matter of time...

Hell is other people's code.

No, Hell is having to write those million lines of code from scratch, by yourself. Or maybe it's having to sort through the same million that was written with goto and without comments or documentation...hmmmmmmmmm

i would choose writing 1 million lines of code over debugging 1 thousand lines of someone else's code any day of the week....especially if the person whose code youre debugging is not a very efficient programmer.....OK im done pouting for the week now

I thought it went something like "for every bug you fix you create 10 more bugs"?

That too... on the subject of other people's code, my code is any other programmer's nightmare: no indents, no comments, short variable names, no use of case or switch statements, a lot of code commented out which hasn't been used since the first version...

I'm used to it, but even I have a little trouble navigating around a program that I haven't worked on for six months...

I have read that Windows 2000 will contain 25 - 30 million lines of code (lowest estimate is 13 million, highest is 40 million). At 1 bug per 1000 lines of well-tested code (not a phrase that applies to anything from Microsoft) ... Well, you can work it out for yourself.

Someone once said: 'All software contains at least one bug. All software can be reduced by at least one line of code.' So all software can be reduced to one line of code that doesn't work!

In Microsoft's case, that's probably called "reduction to core functionality"

See also http://www.h2g2.com/A186121

This is reminding me strongly of the adverts that used to promote really bad sf movies from the late 1970's: Made for over 15 million dollars (US)...etc. The more money spent on a project thereby increased its quality. The more lines of code spent on a piece of software makes it better....

The larger the institution, the less likely that they'll see logic when logic's necessary: why should Microsoft make something efficient, functional and practical when they can make more money with a host of pissed-off customers that only stay because they've already invested so much money, time and emotional energy in a product that's annoying to start with? (Okay, some people can't afford to switch, any more than they can afford to constantly work on their computer to make it work properly.)

Has Bill Gates ever met Dilbert?

Fruitbat

...and the bugs are called "Hidden Features", Wow