Buggy code

Ever since an actual, live bug was found in a Harvard University computer in 1947—which is where the term "software bug" originates—bugs have had an uncanny attraction to software, like moths to a glowing lamp, or "AI" to a tech company's earnings transcript.

Pretty much all software, from the very first line, is infested with bugs.

Why can't we have software without bugs? I don't know.

As a developer myself—and the maker of this very (undoubtedly buggy) website—I don't try to make buggy software. I try to make things that are useful, and that spark joy or impart knowledge.

Yet with each new feature and dependency, each new line of code, bugs appear out of the ether and lodge themselves ever-deeper into the code.

You try to quash them, but in doing so introduce more bugs. Before you know it, you're no longer a software developer; you're a bug killer. And you become so possessed, so maniacally focused on killing, that you forget what you were trying do in the first place: make something useful with code.

So how do break the cycle of bugs?

You don't.

Fighting against bugs is like fighting against the tide. Bugs are simply inherent to software. You can't have one without the other. Like cookies and milk; peanut butter and jelly; birth and death.

As long as software is part of life, bugs will be part of life.

This realization has freed me to do things I could've never dreamed of before. Like writing code that is not only buggy, but whose sole purpose is to generate bugs.

Thus I present to you the buggiest code on earth: code that produces a swarm of "bugs" flying and buzzing around. Like living bugs, they never seem to tire or die away; on the contrary, they only multiply. You can try swatting them, or running away, but it will be futile. The bugs will follow you, and will eventually overwhelm you. It's best just to accept your fate, and submit to our bug overlords.