The San Diego Fourth of July fireworks show this year malfunctioned, setting off the entire thing like a match in a fireworks factory, burning through the entire 18-minute display in about 20 seconds. I think I saw that in a stupid movie once, but this was for real. No one was hurt, as all the workers were following safety protocols and were protected inside their metal shelters. But the accident resulted in one hell of a show.

The punch line? And what makes this story relevant to this week’s software theme? According to the San Diego Union Tribune, a software glitch set off the 20-second boom fest. Ha! Software glitch!

(Video below the cut.)

At the Museum of Science in Boston, the last time I was there, they had a display of cockroaches, big ones. (Similar to the display pictured here, which is from the London Zoo.) Even though the buggies were behind plastic, I felt an urgent need to get out of there as fast possible.

My phobia of bugs (except for spiders, which don’t bother me much at all, except that I don’t want to get bitten)… My fear of bugs might stem from my childhood. I spent most of my growing years living in an old, yellow house on the side of a hill. A lot of pleasant memories are attached to that house, and a few creepy ones. Each year, for example, we were attacked by a hoard of ants of various sizes. Mostly, we saw the normal, black, carpenter ants, which I learned to live with and to kill on sight. We set down ant traps sometimes, in a never-ending struggle against these tiny invaders.

But we also got other kinds of ants from time to time, too. On one occasion, I pulled a box of cereal out of the cupboard and poured myself a bowl. The cereal was laced with hundreds (or maybe thousands) of tiny, brown-black ants only a millimeter or two long— I don’t know what kind they were, and I never want to see them again. (Fortunately, I can still eat cereal, but I’m religious about wrapping up the bag and closing the box securely when I put it away.)

Jim “Suldog” Sullivan’s tale of The Ant & the Dishwasher reminded me of this and a couple more of my own. And unlike Jim, I do not hate to kill insect. (Shudder.)

Software developers have a wonderful explanation for why there are so, so many software bugs. Unfortunately, it’s a highly technical explanation that’s very difficult for the layman to understand. I’ll try to summarize, but be aware that the following is a gross oversimplification.

The root problem is that software is complex. And it’s not just that software has complexity. It has a lot of complexity. And there are different kinds of complexity. For example, there’s necessary complexity and unnecessary complexity, architectural complexity, design complexity, protocol complexity, and API complexity. And then you have process complexity, such as whether you are able to deliver working software or whether you blame your manager and call him a dork.

Needless to say, software developers like to blame bugs on the complexity of software–or on their managers–but mostly on the complexity of software. However, that’s only part of the real cause of software bugs. Software developers have a dirty little secret: most bugs are simply caused by simple human error, and many of these can be prevented.

Here’s the story about how I got to do episode 3 of the be the story podcast all over again from scratch.