Software will always have bugs :(

Someone uncovered an obscure bug in the Java computer language which has been there since, probably, for ever. Which is 15 years or so in the Java universe. The bug hangs Java when trying to convert one specific string to a floating point number. This also affects some other programming languages which use the same de facto standard algorithm.

A few years back we discovered that Java’s implementation of binary search – also based on a de facto standard algorithm “proved” correct – returns incorrect results under certain extreme circumstances. This one is now fixed. We think.

There are probably obscure bugs in most every modern programming language – and therefore in most every software built using modern programming languages – that can remain hidden for years, even decades.