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Category
Debugging
Summary
In computer programming and software development, debugging is the process of finding and resolving bugs (defects or problems that prevent correct operation) within computer programs, software, or systems.
Debugging tactics can involve interactive debugging, control flow analysis, unit testing, integration testing, , monitoring at the application or system level, memory dumps, and profiling. Many programming languages and software development tools also offer programs to aid in debugging, known as debuggers.
The terms "bug" and "debugging" are popularly attributed to Admiral Grace Hopper in the 1940s. While she was working on a Mark II computer at Harvard University, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. However, the term "bug", in the sense of "technical error", dates back at least to 1878 and Thomas Edison who describes the "little faults and difficulties" of mechanical engineering as "Bugs".
Similarly, the term "debugging" seems to have been used as a term in aeronautics before entering the world of computers. In an interview Grace Hopper remarked that she was not coining the term. The moth fit the already existing terminology, so it was saved. A letter from J. Robert Oppenheimer (director of the WWII atomic bomb Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico) used the term in a letter to Dr. Ernest Lawrence at UC Berkeley, dated October 27, 1944, regarding the recruitment of additional technical staff.
The Oxford English Dictionary entry for "debug" quotes the term "debugging" used in reference to airplane engine testing in a 1945 article in the Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society. An article in "Airforce" (June 1945 p. 50) also refers to debugging, this time of aircraft cameras. Hopper's bug was found on September 9, 1947. Computer programmers did not adopt the term until the early 1950s.
The seminal article by Gill in 1951 is the earliest in-depth discussion of programming errors, but it does not use the term "bug" or "debugging".
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