It is very common to have bugs in softwares. Even if we develop software with very much care still it will have some error.
These bugs seem small and annoying for us. But sometimes these small bugs can cause disaster and result in loss of huge money and even human life.
In this article I have shared some serious and famous bugs in computer world.
Top 5 Famous Bugs in Computer Science World
1. Ariane 5 Crash
Ariane 5 was a rocket used to launch spacecrafts. It was exploded only about 40 seconds after its launch. The crush was due to very common bug known as Integer Overflow. It happens when we try to store a number greater than the maximum number that can be stored in a memory. This incident resulted in the loss of $370 million.
2. Y2K Bug
During 1960s the computer engineers used 2 digits to represent years. So 1970 would be represented as 70. They used only 2 digits to reduce the size to store the data. This method worked fine till 31 Dec, 1999. But on 1 January, 2000 many computers would have read the year as 1900. To fix this little bug the engineers have to do lot of extra work.
3. PayPal Error
Chris Reynolds from Pennsylvania became world’s richest man when PayPal erroneously credit about $92 quadrillion in his account.
4. Patriot Missile Software Failure
28 American soldiers were killed and 98 were injured when an Iraqi missile hit their barracks. The patriot missile system failed to track and intercept an incoming missile due bug in patriot’s radar and tracking software.
5. Gangnam Style broke YouTube
When YouTube was developed a 32 bit signed integer was used to store the video’s view count. At that time nobody thought that a video would get views more than maximum size of 32 bit singed integer. But Gangnam Style video got views more than this limit. After the limit was exceeded the view count started showing some negative value. Google fixed the bug by changing the view count to a 64 bit signed integer.
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Source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-famous-bugs-in-the-computer-science-world