Fixing Bugs

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When we are talking about IT and IT support, fixing bugs is a rather run of the mill term. But if it was as simple as just fixing a small bump on your computer then you would not really need technicians and IT support centres to help you fix the problem at all. The term fixing a bug has its origins within information technology from the early twentieth century. It happens, as the story goes, that there was once a bunch of data procession pioneers that could not work out why a particular computer program was not really working the way it should have, or working at all. After checking out her computer and trying to figure out what went wrong she realized that a tiny creepy little bug had crawled into her computer system which had proceeded to die and become logged between the computer circuits. And so people have dubbed the term “fixing a bug”. A bug is usually just a small problem but the term has become so common that it is used by IT service centres and the lay people to refer to most kinds of problems these days since they start out as seemingly small problems but can end up being quite complicated.

Here is why on that rare occasion simply fixing a bug is one of the hardest things to do. A lot of the time, people are just generally naïve and clueless as to how things work and instead of figuring out how to work a certain software they think that it is the software itself with the problem, which is not working. When in fact it is the person who does not know how to properly operate the system or software. You see how this can be an obvious problem and it is quite misleading when trying to explain it to a support centre employee who is trying his hardest to figure out what could possibly be done to fix your computer or how your software could have been damaged in the first place. A lack of understanding can lead to a lot of problems initially but it is nothing that cannot be straightened out. Another problem is to do with the IT support staff itself. Occasionally it is not possible to stay constantly up to date and it takes time to upgrade and figure what daily progress is being made in the IT world. This obviously leads to a number of problems since the IT support centre may not have the software you are using or they may not have what is known as the source code for your software.

This source code may belong to a whole other third party and if there is a legitimate bug or something wrong with the software then all the support centre employees will manage to do is aggravate the situation in an effort to deal with and give the customer and the later people who need to fix it an even harder time than anyone might anticipate. It will also take a lot longer obviously. What may initially seem like a harmless bug that just needs a bit of tweaking could be a whole lot more complicated than just that. And if this is the case then you will need a lot of permission before any work can be done. This permission needs to come directly from the software company so that they can ensure there are no fraudulent activities and damaging of any systems or software than may result in the loss of a customer’s trust as well money in terms of warranties and other things. There is also what is known as environment security and integrity which basically means that “any changes to a real-life and live computer system are subject to stringent quality controls”. This basically means a technician or service support centre cannot just fix things as and when they please and they will have to contact the software development team and get a go ahead sign from them first. The software team may just take the problem on themselves if they think it is too much for the general technicians to handle and so there are step by step processes that must be seen to in order to get the best service that you possible can.

You can always call your local IT support centre to fix a bug and if there is not much wrong they will not take up much of your time at all. Before you call anyone though make sure that you have followed all the instructions and there is nothing that you are leaving out that can be easily fixed. Or else you will be wasting both your time and energy and theirs and your hard earned money as well for something pretty avoidable.


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