Tech Nightmare: 49 Times Software Went Completely Rogue

Physicist Steven, who is part of the Omni Calculator Project, agreed with Bored Panda that computers are only as smart as the people who programmed them.

"A computer will do precisely what you tell it to do. No computer language yet developed will get the gist of what you want it to do and correct all your mistakes. That's why bugs are very easy to make and very frustrating learning to program," he said. Alas! A program that could interpret what we're trying to do would be a godsend and might get even more people into coding.

According to Steven, there should be a way to fix things, as long as you know that the problem lies with your code. At this point, patience and diligence are key.

"You just have to preserve with it until it's fixed. This may mean stepping through the code one line at a time, seeing how values change, just before the bug strikes. If the values are not what you expect, track back through the code to see how those values were derived to help find the bug. There is a great feeling of accomplishment once you've squashed a bug."

Very recently, Bored Panda had a good long chat about the programming world with software engineer and all-around creative Andrew Eckel. He explained that when someone’s pushed to learn a new programming language, it can lead to a lot of growth.

"My undergrad program was taught in C++, but where I went to grad school, they used Java. To catch up, I wound up taking graduate-level classes and the freshman intro class in the same semester. My fellow students in the freshman class wondered how I suddenly became their TA in the following semester," he gave an example from his own life.

According to the software engineer, coding leaves a lot of room for creativity. He said that for anyone to say that programming isn’t creative is "like saying using a sewing machine isn't creative.”

He said: ”It's creative if you make something creative with it! It's a craft that can be done both artfully and in the service of creating great art. Or you can program a garage door opener with it."

Andrew added, jokingly: "If people say it isn't creative, you won't hear them over the sound of your garage door closing."

Meanwhile, sometime before that, Andrew said that debugging can actually be fun. Programming, as a whole, is very rewarding once the coder manages to figure out the puzzle in front of them.

"The best moment for any programmer is seeing something you built work for the first time. It seems almost too good to be true, when something goes from an idea to a bunch of lines of code, to something that actually works and is helpful," the programming expert said.

"You don't even need to invent anything to experience this thrill. Often it's just a matter of taking a well-known algorithm and applying it to a new situation,” he added.

“There are many great teachers out there who can teach about algorithms and the thought process of how to apply them—people who can take something that has the potential to be really dry and make it fun and interesting," Andrew noted that teaching programming is the same as teaching anything else: a lot depends on the teacher, not just the subject.

He stressed the fact that programmers have to learn to enjoy their daily lives that won’t be chock full of huge wins and breakthroughs.

"Those 'eureka' moments don't happen every day, but the day-to-day fun in programming is debugging. I know that sounds crazy because if you're debugging it usually means the code you wrote doesn't work! But everyone I work with feels this way. The more confusing and strange the program's behavior is, the more fun it is to unravel the mystery, find the cause, and fix it. It's like a puzzle."

Aaron Genest, a manager with Siemens Technology, previously explained to Bored Panda what mindset we should have when considering the future of technology and making predictions.

"I'd argue that most people underestimate the timelines necessary to produce the technological goods on which we rely and the investment made to allow them to exist. By looking 'upstream' in that investment space, we can have a pretty good idea of what whole industries are betting on," he said.

"For instance, it takes almost two years to develop and produce a computer chip and get it to market for a phone, and five years to get something into a new kind of car. So if we want to have a sense for what, for instance, the gadgets in our cars will look like in 2026, we just need to look at what the car manufacturers are asking their suppliers to design today,” Aaron said.

The tech expert pointed out that technologies like 5G or various chips that receive billions of dollars of investments will likely stick around in the future. At least, long enough for the companies that invested into them to get their money’s worth.

As such, when making predictions about the future of tech, prognosticators look ‘upstream’ at recent and not-so-recent industry trends instead of relying “on some crystal ball they hide in their robes." That means that if you want to know what the future looks like, you'd best take a good long look at the present and past. Though, in either case, one thing's for sure: the future is bound to have plenty of hilarious glitches, as well. There's no getting rid of software bugs for good, no matter how advanced society might be.

You might also like: 40 smart inventions that failed because no one understood them