fisher@sc2a.unige.ch (12/04/90)
First of all, thanks for the Jargon file! As a european reader, I must admit that it took me quite some time to figure out some of the acronyms and other typical USENET expressions (somehow a posting of "what's the meaning of %s" doesn't always seem the right thing to do :-); it's nice to have all the answers in one place! Now just a sory about BUGS: My father used to word at the CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), and he described one of their first non-mechanical calculators, in the early sixties, as being a "small house full of tubes and relays". This huge machinery was used - I think - essentially for statistical calculations. Well, sometimes the results were not exaclty those that were expected, and this usually meant is was "debugging time". You see, the cockroaches (sp?) liked the heat for building their nests... resulting in some very strange behavior. Later, every misbehavior of calculators and computers was of course always blamed on the BUGS! I don't know if this ethymology of "bug" and "debug" is true (the story is, though), but I like it better than that of the Jargon file. Markus Fischer, Dpt. of Anthropology, Geneva CH
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (12/07/90)
Go to the Smithsonian Institution, you can see the actual moth with your own eyes. It's taped to a log book, with an entry along the lines of "actual bug found in system". It's clear from the log entry that the term "bug" predated the event. (not crossposted because the thread was already split. Sigh) -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U` peter@ferranti.com