Types of Bugs You’ll Encounter Throughout Your Software Testing Journey

The origin of bugs goes back to the origin of software applications. Yes, there has never been a software without bugs and there will never be, no matter how advanced methodologies or bug management tools you use. Many testers and developers all around the globe wake up in the morning and go to work with one goal: eliminate the bugs. And despite their relentless efforts, they never achieve the 0-bug-mark. Reason? Because it’s not possible to achieve it. So if you’re a novice or planning to pursue a career as a tester or a developer, get ready to encounter tons of bugs daily. For that, you’ll need to have sufficient knowledge about them. In this article, we will only discuss the most common types of bugs and a few basic points about them.

Incorrect Calculations

Incorrect calculations can be caused by various reasons like coding errors, data type mismatch, or wrong algorithms. These kinds of bugs are known to have inflicted huge financial losses and accidents in the past. One of the most prominent examples is the loss of $500 million due to the crash of the Ariane 5 rocket. The rocket crashed due to miscalculations.

Functional Errors

All the functionalities of software must work correctly. Meaning that the expected result should coincide with the actual one. But that’s not always the case. At least when there are bugs. And when there is a wide range of functions, there is a great probability of bug omission. These errors vary from unclickable buttons to the inability to use the main functionality of the software. They can be recorded, tracked, and reported via bug management tools that help significantly lower the cost of bugs and time it takes to resolve them.

Error-Handling Errors

Problems occur when users interact with the software and it’s the job of testers and developers to handle them successfully. Users must be informed about the problems and how they can work their ways out of them. Users must be informed through informative messages if they do something incorrectly.

Communication Errors

Interaction with the software should be effortless. Don’t expect the user to put the effort into thinking where your game-changing feature is. Also, the user must always be notified with messages and operation status when, for example, you’re uploading a file or sending a letter. If the file can’t be sent or there’s some other issue, show an error message. If the software fails to do so, it’s not communicating right.

Syntactic Errors

These are the grammatical and language mistakes that can be avoided by thorough GUI testing. Their impact is not very significant but these kinds of mistakes can leave your users confused for some time.

Missing Command Errors

It’s the absence button or a logical option. For example, you cannot close a pop-up window without performing some actions, even if you don’t want to.

Boundary-Related Errors

Software resources are scarce as well. You can run into major problems if you don’t consider these limitations. For example memory limit, the maximum number of simultaneous users, maximum text size, etc.

Conclusion

There you have it, seven of the most common types of bugs testers and developers encounter daily. I hope this article has been helpful to you.