"Glitch" is an interesting word. I've rarely heard it used to describe problems within the software industry, and almost never by actual software developers. Yet journalists seem to
love it, and you often see headlines like "Software glitch costs bank $500m a day" or "Report says software glitch caused fatal accident", even when stronger-sounding words like "defect" or "failure" would seem more appropriate.
And politicians seem to really love it as well, perhaps because it is a funny-sounding, non-threatening word, implying a minor hiccup rather than a serious defect. So, whenever some new, high-profile software system crashes and burns upon launch, you get lots of folksy talk about glitches: there's just a few glitches, they're fixing the glitches, you've got to expect a few glitches, etc. Whenever I heard such talk, I like to imagine the difference between the attempts to downplay the problems, and the likely reality of stressed-out engineers scrambling to fix a system that was released in a half-finished state due to an unrealistic deadline.
And politicians seem to really love it as well, perhaps because it is a funny-sounding, non-threatening word, implying a minor hiccup rather than a serious defect. So, whenever some new, high-profile software system crashes and burns upon launch, you get lots of folksy talk about glitches: there's just a few glitches, they're fixing the glitches, you've got to expect a few glitches, etc. Whenever I heard such talk, I like to imagine the difference between the attempts to downplay the problems, and the likely reality of stressed-out engineers scrambling to fix a system that was released in a half-finished state due to an unrealistic deadline.