The word "bug" doesn't come from Harvard

last updated: Jul 13, 2024

https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bug1.htm

I actually found this out through Kernighan and Pike's chapter on debugging in "The practice of programming". The OED apparently cites Thomas Edison:

Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering ‘a bug’ in his phonograph — an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble

So the common story that an actual moth in a machine at Harvard is the source of the name "bug" isn't quite accurate, though it does seem to have happened.

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