Why Do Bugs Occur?
Now that you know what bugs are, you might be wondering why they occur. What you’ll be surprised to find out is that most of them aren’t caused by programming errors. Numerous studies have been performed on very small to extremely large projects and the results are always the same. The number one cause of software bugs is the specification (see Figure 1.1). The Cost of Bugs As you will learn in Chapter 2, software doesn’t just magically appear—there’s usually a planned, methodical development process used to create it. From its inception, through the planning, programming, and testing, to its use by the public, there’s the potential for bugs to be found. Figure 1.2 shows an example of how the cost of fixing these bugs can grow over time.
