Hindenbug

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What Does Hindenbug Mean?

A Hindenbug is a catastrophic bug that destroys data, and
may also shut down systems or cause other major problems with an IT system. It is a
general IT slang word for a major bug that does more than just create a
nuisance or an annoyance for users.

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Techopedia Explains Hindenbug

In 1937, the German Hindenburg airship caught fire,
ultimately killing dozens of people. The widely recorded disaster stood as a
symbol of tragic emergency situations gone wrong. Nearly a century later, the
name Hindenburg was morphed into this slang term to describe code problems that
result in serious consequences for developers and users. A Hindenbug might
result, for example, when a mislabeled variable or incorrect parameter causes
input data to crash and be destroyed in a software application. It is a massive
consequence, because that data cannot be recovered. Programmers take Hindenbugs
very seriously.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.