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Observer Effect (information Technology)
In information technology, the observer effect is the impact on the behaviour of a computer process caused by the act of observing the process while it is running. For example: if a process uses a log file to record its progress, the process could slow down. Furthermore, the act of viewing the file while the process is running could cause an I/O error in the process, which could, in turn, cause it to stop. Another example would be observing the performance of a CPU by running both the observed and observing programs on the same CPU, which will lead to inaccurate results because the observer program itself affects the CPU performance (modern, heavily cached and pipelined CPUs are particularly affected by this kind of observation). The observer effect could either have a positive or negative impact on the computer process behaviour. A positive impact can be software bugs, also known as Heisenbugs, which diminish or change their negative behavior when observation mechanisms, such a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (IT system) is generally an information system, a communications system, or, more specifically speaking, a computer system — including all hardware, software, and peripheral equipment — operated by a limited group of IT users. Although humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, and communicating information since the earliest writing systems were developed, the term ''information technology'' in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the ''Harvard Business Review''; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Bug
A software bug is an error, flaw or fault in the design, development, or operation of computer software that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. The process of finding and correcting bugs is termed " debugging" and often uses formal techniques or tools to pinpoint bugs. Since the 1950s, some computer systems have been designed to deter, detect or auto-correct various computer bugs during operations. Bugs in software can arise from mistakes and errors made in interpreting and extracting users' requirements, planning a program's design, writing its source code, and from interaction with humans, hardware and programs, such as operating systems or libraries. A program with many, or serious, bugs is often described as ''buggy''. Bugs can trigger errors that may have ripple effects. The effects of bugs may be subtle, such as unintended text formatting, through to more obvious effects such as causing a program to crash, freezing th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heisenbug
In computer programming jargon, a heisenbug is a software bug that seems to disappear or alter its behavior when one attempts to study it. The term is a pun on the name of Werner Heisenberg, the physicist who first asserted the observer effect of quantum mechanics, which states that the act of observing a system inevitably alters its state. In electronics, the traditional term is probe effect, where attaching a test probe to a device changes its behavior. Similar terms, such as ''bohrbug'', ''mandelbug'', ''hindenbug'', and ''schrödinbug'' (see the section on related terms) have been occasionally proposed for other kinds of unusual software bugs, sometimes in jest. Examples Heisenbugs occur because common attempts to debug a program, such as inserting output statements or running it with a debugger, usually have the side-effect of altering the behavior of the program in subtle ways, such as changing the memory addresses of variables and the timing of its execution. One comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debugging
In computer programming and software development, debugging is the process of finding and resolving '' bugs'' (defects or problems that prevent correct operation) within computer programs, software, or systems. Debugging tactics can involve interactive debugging, control flow analysis, unit testing, integration testing, log file analysis, monitoring at the application or system level, memory dumps, and profiling. Many programming languages and software development tools also offer programs to aid in debugging, known as ''debuggers''. Etymology The terms "bug" and "debugging" are popularly attributed to Admiral Grace Hopper in the 1940s. While she was working on a Mark II computer at Harvard University, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. However, the term "bug", in the sense of "technical error", dates back at least to 1878 and Thomas Edison who describes the "litt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
