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5 most commonly found types of bugs and how to fix them

For any website or mobile application to be helpful for the end-users in the real-world environment, it needs comprehensively testing for the most common bugs. Read on to know about the most commonly found bugs and how to fix them.

The software development life cycle (SDLC) has several stages that include testing. No code is ever written with perfection when first created. Bugs, errors, and anomalies repeatedly occur, so companies perform a comprehensive software assessment to maintain its quality.

But what happens when bugs are not identified early on during the software development?

The cost of fixing bugs and security issues increases with each development stage. It is least expensive to correct errors and anomalies in the design phase. According to a study by the Systems Sciences Institute at IBM, fixing a bug during implementation costs 6x higher than fixing it during the design phase. Furthermore, the study found that companies waiting to fix bugs during the Testing phase of SDLC could end up paying 15 times more compared to the cost of recording and resolving bugs during the design and development phase.

Competent QA engineers understand that to fix bugs early stage, it is essential to know the most common errors that occur. It helps to understand what kind of bugs popup during which phase of project development.

To save time and cost invested in testing, here are the most common software bugs that developers and QA engineers often encounter. Pay attention as soon as you identify them because that is the best way to tackle them effectively.

1. Functional Bugs

The errors associated with the functionality of a specific software component are called functional bugs. A non-responsive Login Button or an erroneous Cart function is functional bugs as they don’t function as intended.

It can be costly to fix these issues if they appear in actual use conditions. Functional testing help testers evaluate a website or app in a live environment early on rather than discovering them in the production environment.

2. Logical Bugs

Nothing can be more complicated to troubleshoot than a poorly constructed logic. Logical bugs cause the software to malfunction, disrupting the entire application. How devastating the effects of logical bugs can be was evident when NASA lost its Mars Probe spacecraft in 1999 because engineers in the software team forgot to convert British measurements into American units.

While most software projects won’t be of such scale or involve millions of dollars worth of space vehicles, logical bugs can be challenging to track. Fuzzy testing is a common approach for identifying logical bugs. During this testing, malformed inputs are sent to a code block to expose infinite loops, memory leaks, and crashes.

3. Workflow Bugs

Workflow bugs are associated with the navigation of a software application.

For example, consider a payment function that involves several steps. Users can switch between pages with ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons to complete the process. But if the ‘next’ navigation exits the process, the workflow is broken, resulting in a bug. 

Fortunately, workflow bugs are the easiest to identify as they are much more apparent. Manual testing is enough to find most workflow bugs.

Unit Level Bugs

Unit level bugs are pretty common and easier to fix. As each software module is in written form, testers can test small batches of code to ensure they are functioning as expected. Unit testing helps developers capture bugs that are left undetected during coding. Before moving to the next component, the bugs are isolated and fixed.

For instance, when working on a signup page, a developer can verify all the user input fields and validation buttons. If a field does not accept input or the validation is not working correctly, that will be a unit-level bug.

4. System-Level Integration Bugs

These bugs are in one word: miscommunication. System-level integration bugs occur when two or more units created by different developers are integrated. These bugs stop different units from interacting due to inconsistencies or incompatibility.

System-level integration bugs are hard to track and even harder to fix as developers need to examine thousands of lines of code. Inappropriate interfacing, memory overflow issues, and database connectivity issues are common system-level integration bugs.

5. Out of Bound Bugs

When a system user interacts with the UI of an application or website unintentionally, out-of-bound bugs occur. Entering a too large or too small value in an input field or using an undefined data type are expected out of bound bugs. Form validation issues that pop up during functional testing are examples of such errors.

Conclusion

For any website or mobile application to be helpful for the end-users in the real-world environment, it needs comprehensively testing for the most common bugs. Regardless of the software complexity and size, testers and developers must ensure that most bugs are identified and resolved early as possible. Fixing bugs at the later stages of software development proves to be costly and time-consuming.
Talent500 is the platform for Quality Assurance engineers to find opportunities with global companies. Join our elite pool of software testers found by fast-growing startups and Fortune500 companies.

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Girish

Girish

Girish is Talent500’s architect for systems software. His experience in backend development has helped him convert visions of many a product into reality. From his days at BITS-Pilani, he has always dreamt about beating AplhaZero at chess.

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