How many times have you heard, “It’s not a bug—it’s a feature!”?
We know that the word bug is prominent in tech today, and we know it goes back a long way. Grace Hopper, the brilliant programmer of the Mark II computer, was long rumored to have coined the term bug as it pertains to tech. While this isn’t true, Hopper’s quick wit was enough to preserve this moment when they found a literal insect inside their machine.
In addition to her powerful analytical mind, Hopper was also graced with a fantastic sense of humor. When she discovered that her team had found a moth inside of the machine, she made a little joke about this, based on an existing term: a bug.
I’m not quite sure how this story became an apocryphal story about the origin of the term “bug”, but the truth is that the term predated Hopper’s Mark II incident by nearly a century, and possibly much more. Thomas Edison famously used the word “bug” to refer to technical issues with his inventions, and the word was in use during the early 20th century in the same manner.
Gradually, most people I knew became comfortable with the word bug. If gremlins crawled around creating havoc in airplane engines, then bugs did the same thing inside computers, even if there wasn’t a physical bug, or even any kind of physical object—the bug could easily be software related.
Tech folks have always gravitated more toward humor with a dark and nerdy edge, often being comically self-referential. I can assure you that self-deprecation is a valuable skill if you’re among the ostracized, and this skill set seems to have been well honed during the late 80s and early 90s, right as the phrase in question began to crop up:
It’s not a bug—it’s a feature!
Besides simply being a cynical dismissal of a criticism (certainly one way to take it), this phrase can indicate something else in the mind of the speaker, too. That something is neuroplasticity.
Your brain can actually change its physical structure based on your experiences.
Ever hear the phrase “the neurons that fire together, wire together”? This is exactly how new skills can be learned: that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice causes new pathways to form when new connections are reinforced enough. You can literally think differently by rewiring your brain.
If you don’t believe you’re the type of person who can change their behavior, you’re probably right. The more open you are to change, the more likely permanent change is to happen for you.
Sometimes, a project doesn’t go well for you, and you might be tempted to beat yourself up over a poor result. You might wallow in your own self-pity for a while, but after a day or so, it’s probably time to move on.
Still, simply moving on and leaving behind all that emotional baggage is far from simple!
Reframing can be the key. This involves looking at the situation through an entirely different lens. Instead of looking at the failed project, look at the data you’ve just gathered and start thinking about how you’ll use that for your next project. Or maybe you forgive the past version of yourself, as I find myself doing all the time while strolling down memory lane.
It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the bug/feature joke originated in Silicon Valley, then. Not only do you need a ton of mental flexibility if you’re going to keep up with fast-paced software development, but you’re also going to need a good sense of humor.
You’ll have a lot of things going wrong all the time. One useful way to deal is with dark humor, and describing something that failed completely as a success? Not a bad way to cope, even if it’s a little delusional.
But that’s the thing: reframing doesn’t always have to be delusional. In fact, you can be honest and kind to yourself in ways that are useful to you. You can give yourself permission to be curious, in a manner of speaking.
If you’re always afraid of making mistakes, you may never make any again, and that would be tragic. Mistakes are how you learn new things.
I won't deny, I've been using the term 'Feature, not Bug,' a lot this past week as people keep puzzling why some orgs are so innefficient. I try to have them rephrase the problem to see if they can see why people are being rewarded for that inefficiency.
Your last paragraph reminds me of Teddy Rosevelt’s “man in the arena” speech: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”