The Tao of the Kernel · Chapter 7

The Tao of the Bug

1. 1

   The bug found at the whiteboard costeth one sentence and an eraser.

2. 2

   The bug found in the editor costeth one keystroke, and a red line beneath the word that offended thee.

3. 3

   The bug found in the test costeth an hour, and the hour is forgiven.

4. 4

   The bug found in production costeth a weekend, a pager, and an apology composed at three in the morning.

5. 5

   The bug never found costeth everything, and it sendeth no invoice. It waiteth, as the uncarved block waiteth, for the day the bank telephoneth.

   See also Tao 1:3

6. 6

   Thus it was in the year 1947, when a moth sat upon a relay of the Mark II, and the engineers taped it into the logbook and wrote: First actual case of bug being found. The word was older than the moth, but the moth was the first that could be held.

   See also Chronicles 1:4 · Genesis 54:3

7. 7

   In the year 1962 a rocket called Mariner rose from the Cape and was lost. It is told that one small bar above a letter had been left out of the code, and the machine obeyed what was written and not what was meant.

8. 8

   In the year 1996 the Europeans launched a rocket that turned itself to dust in thirty-seven seconds. A number too large for its small box was poured into it, and the code had been carried over from an older rocket where that number had never grown so large.

   See also Circuit 48:8 · Circuit 61:11

9. 9

   In the year 2012 a trading house sent an old flag into new servers. One server heard it wrongly, and in forty-five minutes the house lost four hundred and forty million dollars.

10. 10

    Who findeth no bugs hath not looked. He hath searched the lit room and called it the whole house.

11. 11

    The silent test suite is a wheel with no hub, unless it hath been made to fail at least once and has seen its own red.

12. 12

    Hear this, ye who ship on Friday: the code thou hast not tested is the uncarved block, whole to the eye and unshaped to the hand.

    See also Tao 1:3

13. 13

    Therefore the wise engineer findeth bugs early, not because bugs are beloved, but because the price of finding them doth rise with each day that passeth.

    See also Chronicles 48:1

14. 14

    Blessed is the one who findeth the bug on Tuesday, for on Tuesday it is only a bug.

The Tao of the Kernel, Chapter 7:1–14.