Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT July 5th - July 9th (4561-4565)

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Farideh:
New comic.


RIP, Doctor Mandibles.


Nice callback to the origin of the term 'bug' when it relates to computers.



--- Quote ---
The term "bug" was used in an account by computer pioneer Grace Hopper, who publicized the cause of a malfunction in an early electromechanical computer. A typical version of the story is:


In 1946, when Hopper was released from active duty, she joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she continued her work on the Mark II and Mark III. Operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book. Stemming from the first bug, today we call errors or glitches in a program a bug.


Hopper did not find the bug, as she readily acknowledged. The date in the log book was September 9, 1947. The operators who found it, including William "Bill" Burke, later of the Naval Weapons Laboratory, Dahlgren, Virginia, were familiar with the engineering term and amusedly kept the insect with the notation "First actual case of bug being found." Hopper loved to recount the story. This log book, complete with attached moth, is part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

--- End quote ---

shanejayell:
Poor bug...

Wombat:
I'm reminded of a poem I read in school, "the lesson of the moth."


--- Quote ---but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
--- End quote ---

RIP, weird bug. You will, most likely, be forgotten.

Farideh:
That poem is strangely beautiful.

Gnabberwocky:
I guess silver medal for Fastest Exit goes to Anthony Jones?

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