Software Methologies

Is There a Universal Solution For Avoiding Bugs in Software?

A software bug is a flaw in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Bugs can cause various effects to users. Moreover, the costs of consequence from bugs are always enormous. According to a study from the US department of Commerce, software bugs cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product. Accordingly, the software industry needs some approaches to avoid bugs. Based on the research, there are three potential ways to reduce number of software bugs. After some critical analysis, it is clear to readers that choosing a correct developing method at the beginning of a project is the most effective way to apply to the software industry with consideration of many factors. The determination has to be made based on the experience and knowledge of developers, attributes of software requirements, the size of a project, as well as the size of companies.

Yang Zhou April 21, 2013

1

  The software industry has become enormous in recent years especially after wide application of smart phones, and is now the third biggest industry in the world, behind the automobile and the electronics industries. According to market research firm Data Monitor, the global software industry in 2008 was 303.8 billion US dollars, (DataMonitor, 2009). As a result of the sheer size of the software market, one might expect the industry to be highly developed and to produce flawless products. However, the problem of software bugs inevitably continues to arise in the process of software development: generally speaking, no bug-free program exists. Such software bugs are errors or faults that exist in computer programs or systems that cause program to behave in unintended and incorrect ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes made by programmers in either the source...