Bug Collection

I keep every bug I’ve written. That first unescaped SQL query sits on a pedestal next to a card catalog bulging with cross-site scripting vectors. There’s a mishandled UTC offset pinned to the cork-board by the door. Step inside, and the portraits of race conditions line the hall.

Bugs are as much a part of software as developers and hardware. Even with increasingly ironclad assurances to the contrary, the messy combination of I/O, complex systems, and human fallibility will surely continuing breeding specimens for the collection in the months and years ahead.

And that’s kind of its point. The collection’s there to be studied. It’s not a pile of merde hacked together in a fit of masochistic glee: it’s a laundry list of real, honest-to-goodness bugs discovered during the post-mortem shakedown of well-intentioned production software.

Wrote it, broke it, fixed it.

Learned something.

Moved along.