Picture this — a physician participating in a clinical study is recording a patient's vital statistics and reaction to a trial treatment. The physician picks up a pen and scribbles this information onto a paper chart, which will later be transcribed into a computer database that may or may not be connected to the organization sponsoring the study. You're probably thinking this is a scene from 1980, which would be correct — but what you may not guess, is that it is also a scene from the 21st century!

As the old joke goes, the best way to end up with a bug-free program or script is to write it with no bugs to begin with. But that smug line ignores the realities of compressed schedules and budgets, constantly shifting requirements, the often-negative effects of maintenance by programmers unfamiliar with the original code, and ever changing hosting environments. Months and years after its original release, following system upgrades and multiple security patches, your once-perfect code might be reduced to a bug-riddled albatross.