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It's not a bug, it's a feature

Have you heard someone say this? Or maybe you’ve said it? I have definitely joked about it before.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature! Some behaviour that was unexpected. Maybe it was flagged as erroneous because it wasn’t in the specifications. But does it need to be changed?

For example, take a side-scrolling game with jumping (like Mario). When someone presses jump, you’ll need a condition to check if there is already a jump or fall in progress. But if you forget this check, you get a “bug” where you can double-jump! (or infinite jump in this case). Many games have double jump as a feature, and I wonder if it started off as a bug.

Have you worked on a project where a bug turned out to be a feature? What was it?

- Karl

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