Bugs in Code vs Bugs in Home
Why bugs in your code are like bugs in your home, and deserve the same philosophy and response...
Bugs in your code are like bugs in your home.
If you see one or two, and rarely, you might ignore it. You might let it go unchecked. Why? You might feel its not worth the hassle. Or may simply forget or get distracted by seemingly higher priorities or more urgent demands.
But if you let too many bugs run wild, or if you leave the root cause unfixed or their upstream "entrance" go unsealed, and long enough, then eventually you may come to regret it.
Why?
Bugs in code are a symptom usually of some other issue. A novice or lazy programmer who doesn't think through their code well enough, if at all. Or a programmer who misunderstands the language syntax or API features they exercised. Perhaps a third party library or service depended on is itself buggy. Or its documentation was wrong. Perhaps there *were* no tests written, or no manual testing done. No code review -- or it was done too fast or too carelessly, or by the wrong people. (Because experience and expertise *do* still matter, everywhere, no matter how much we try to automate it away, or replicate it artificially -- and usually poorly!)
Bugs in your home can get into your food supply and destroy it, or at least contaminate it. Bugs (and other pests like mice or rats) *defecate* wherever they go. Bugs die and leave corpses. Bugs can bite, lay eggs upon or otherwise feast on the unsuspecting humans living in your household. They might crawl across you, at random, late at night, when you or your kids are in bed, causing surprise and stress. They invade your "comfortable little cave of safety" and disrupt your sense of peace and relaxation. Bugs can lead to unhealthy environments and disease in the humans and pets in your household. They can harm your family and loved ones. They should NOT be there, inside YOUR home, period.
The two phenomena *can* both be fixed. Though no course of action can lead to 100% perfect outcomes, for free or forever. But they each have a set of treatments which cause significant, noticeable & tangible improvements which, in turn, lead to a better quality of life for the people involved. To greater peace of mind.
For your code, programmers can be encouraged to put extra time and care into getting their changes right the first time, before they "ship" it to prod. Afterall, the data is clear that it takes LESS time to prevent a bug upfront than to be forced to learn about it the hard way later, in black box mystery form, and begin the painful process of learning how to reproduce it, and identifying when it was introduced, by who, and in what exact lines of code. Doing it right the *first* time thus often pays dividends. Though it takes good judgment and experience to gauge the right ratio of effort invested upfront.
Also, a variety of additional formal measures do help to decrease the chance of bugs -- or at least minimize the time it takes to first detect them and fix them, efficiently. Like: more automated tests, fuzzers, code reviews, and even static code analysis tools which look for known problematic patterns.
For your home, the best way to address the problem of bugs will vary by situation. One can draw from a mix of techniques tailored to the needs of a particular location.
Pesticides or traps, for example, are common, but also sanitary cleanup efforts afterward. Having an expert inspect a site can help precisely because they'll have "seen it all" and be able to conclude both exactly what creatures/species are involved, what treatment sets are possible, which are the best to use (eg. which are the cheapest or the most effective and durable -- as well as legal, in your location/jurisdiction), how much, and both when and where to apply them or place them, safely. Also, ideally they can help to identify or seal the sneaky ways that bugs are likely physically entering into a home (or business) from the outside, in the first place. Their little "bug-sized" doorways and routes, how they commute. Like through holes, cracks, or gaps in the building structure, or via ducts/pipes leading to the outside. Addressing it most effectively in the long term may also involve a simple improvement to daily habits in the household, like not leaving food out in the open long, or messy food residue or scraps of a type bugs like. In essence, making sure the home is cozy again for humans but NOT attractive or even enterable or available as a home for bugs too -- not anymore.
Bugs happen.
Both in code and in life, in general.
A certain amount of them will be around naturally. And in the case of biological bugs, *literally* out in nature where they belong they can sometimes be very helpful and healthy for ecosystems or agriculture -- like bees.
But... if there are TOO many, especially in places where they should NOT be -- like inside your family's home or in the critical production code which earns your paychecks -- then they CAN become a nuisance and compounding danger, a risk which will only grow over time if left unaddressed.
Like real bugs, a code bug itself is not the sole problem or flaw. Rather its the logical implication of some *deeper* upstream flaw in your environment or group's practices and therefore correcting *those* -- ideally ASAP -- often saves you the most trouble over the long run.
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NOTE: With thanks for domain expertise & draft feedback from: