Com'c #230

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Commentary Transcript

- John is a professional freelance programmer

Programming can be finicky. Getting a single character wrong can create major bugs, or worse, prevent the program from working at all, and tracking down where that error is isn't always easy. And then there are things that you can't do because of the rules of the language, but that it isn't obvious that you can't do, and cases where the operation itself makes sense in theory, but where in practice you might end up with it trying to do something it can't (most commonly a NullPointerException or an equivalent, which is when you try to do something to nothing). At least software with the aim of aiding the programmer (known as IDEs) in both coding and troubleshooting is continually being improved.

Fun fact: The word "bug" referring both to a) somewhat creepy critters with many legs and b) errors in computer/software behavior is not coincidental. In the early days of computers, when they still took up half a school gym, errors were often caused by literal bugs and insects inside the computer itself. They came in through windows that had to be left open because the computers needed air.

I don't think John's computer takes up half a school gym, though.