Software bug

A software bug is an error in a computer program. The term comes from hardware engineering, where a design flaw in a circuit or other product was called a "bug".

When undetected, software bugs can wreak havoc or just be mildly annoying. The most common bugs deal with memory allocation or pointer arithmetic. The program will place or look for information in the wrong location. This is the hardest type of error to detect, and is common in C and C++ programs. Java is not susceptible to this type of error, as all memory operations are handled and checked by the virtual machine.