Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed the world of technology, enabling systems to learn, adapt, and make decisions without explicit programming. From autonomous vehicles to medical diagnostics and flight control systems, AI promises unprecedented efficiency and capability. However, when it comes to safety-critical systems—where failure could result in injury, loss of life, or significant damage—the use of AI introduces profound challenges that go far beyond traditional software engineering. Unlike conventional software, which behaves predictably according to its programmed logic, AI is built on learning and training. Its decisions and outputs depend heavily on the data it has been trained on and the patterns it recognizes during runtime. This adaptive, data-driven behavior means that an AI system’s responses may vary with changing inputs or environments, often in ways that are not explicitly defined or foreseen by developers. While this flexibility is a strength in many applica...
Have you ever wondered what is the difference between error, fault, bug, defect and failure? All these terms seem highly confusing and interchangeable, whereas they are distinct and used in different contexts. In this blog post, I will explain what is the difference between error, fault, bug, defect and failure.
DEFECT: A defect is a variance between expected and actual results. Defect is typically found after the software application goes into production. Defect is the deviation from the customer requirement, which may be observed by the user or the tester.
Example: The software will allow a user to make online payments using a debit card.
Defect: The option of selecting a debit card for making payments is missing.
ERROR: An error is a mistake or omission by a software developer. Programming errors may be logical errors, syntax errors or semantic errors.
Example: Common examples of an error are Null Pointer Exception and Divide by Zero.
Example of Null Pointer Exception Error
BUG: A bug is an error or a fault in a software program which causes it to produce unexpected results. Bug is typically used in terminology of software engineers or software developers. Bugs are usually observed and reported by software testers to the programmers, who eventually fix those bugs. The process of identifying and fixing the cause of bug is called software debugging.
Example: Common example of a bug is application crash.
An Example Bug Report
FAILURE: Failure is the opposite of success, which is the state of a software program of not performing its required functions within specified performance constraints. Software failures are typically observed by the user, which may arise due to wrong input or some virus. A software may recover from a failure state by system reboot.
Example: An example of a failure is Blue Screen of Death in Windows OS.
FAULT: An incorrect step or definition in a software program which causes the program to fail. A fault is introduced into the software as the result of an error (such as a typo). A fault is the result of an error which generates a failure.
Example: An example of a fault is missing semi-colon.
EXAMPLE
This code snippet returns the product of the 'param' multiplied by 2.
1. int multiplyby2 (int number) {
2. int result;
3. result = number * number;
4. return result;
5. }
Output: A call to multiplyby2(3) returns 9, but it should return 6.
- Observing the result 9 is a failure.
- Failure occurred due to the fault on line 3 ("number" instead of "2").
- The fault is due to typo error (someone typed "number" instead of "2" by mistake).
These three different labels are used for a Bug to precisely communicate the problem.
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