When I was in school, there was some space shuttle simulator computer game we used to play.

I don’t recall its name, but I do remember that there was a bug that if you crashed the shuttle calamitously enough while attempting landing, it’d say something like: “11 out of 7 astronauts on board died.”

Of course for us the game became all about how we could for example orbitally slingshot the shuttle around the moon to slam it into the earth at 60,000mph or any other method we could discover to arrange for the most fiery, disastrous crash.

My speculation is that the designers and coders didn’t consider that anyone would devise ways to crash the space shuttle as devastatingly as possible to cause the most fatalities, so they coded nothing to check if someone went beyond whatever bound they’d established for a “normal” crash.

My memories are hazy as I was 10 or so at the time, but I think one of us eventually got it to say, “20 out of 7 astronauts on board died.”

And that my coders is why you test your software for scenarios that you think surely no one will ever try.