How a bug becomes a feature
Microsoft developer Raymond Chen has a delightful (albeit sometimes very technical) blog that often has very interesting insights into Windows and bits of its history. For example, the common semi-humorous expression, “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature”, has a real basis. While discussing a mistake in the programming of Windows, whose details I will skip, Chen writes:
Why haven’t these mistakes been fixed? Well, how can you prove that there aren’t any programs that rely on the mistakes? One thing you quickly learn in application compatibility is that a bug once shipped gains the status of a feature, because you can be pretty sure that some program somewhere relies on it. (I’ve seen a plugin that relies on a memory leak in Explorer, for example.)
So there you have it; that bug really is a feature.
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