Celebrity Bug Watch

If you are a bug and you manage to escape the erstwhile testers, it must be a dream come true to become famous. What usually happens is that these bugs with dreams of becoming celebrities wind up becoming waiters or waitresses, or at best part-time models, while waiting for their "big break" that never comes. Every once in a while however, a bug gets the attention of the critics and the press and become famous.

That is happening now with the Excel 100000 Bug, or E100k as it is called among friends. This bug's talent is that if you multiply 77.1*850, Excel will display 100,000 instead of 65,535 as it should. I don't know about you, but it happens to me all the time. Joel Spolsky offers an explanation of why this bug occurs, in case you care.

I'm glad I am not the tester that let this bug get by. Given the press that this thing is getting, I'm sure the Microsoft execs are getting all in a dither, and are in turn getting the upper management stirred up, who are taking it out on middle management, who must be going after the 1st line manager of the Excel Multiplication QA Team. That means this manager will ask this poor tester "Why did you not find this bug?"

I hate that question because there is no good answer to it. There are lots of good reasons why bugs get missed, but when you have upper-management involved, every valid reason sounds like an excuse. What can this tester say ?

• "I tested 77*850 and 77.2*850, and since they both worked, I thought it was good to go."


• "I didn't know there would be any math involved"


• "You mean 77.1*850 is not 100,000?"


• "I assumed no one would want to calculate that product"


• "Clippy told me it was OK"

So whatever the reasons for this bug getting out, and the consequences, let me just say Congratulations to E100K on making the big time.