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We love technology, we use it daily, and apparently, we can also laugh at it. The members of the subreddit r/softwaregore have been gathering the funniest software fails that have gone terribly wrong!

The group has been running since the 15th of January, 2013. Now over 1.9 million members are laughing at incidents from the weather toasting up to 1000 degrees to having -2 messages.

Whether you’re a tech wizard seeking a good chuckle, or just a feed scroller, brace yourselves for a laughter-packed journey that will make you question the sanity of programmers.

#1 Quite A Nice Run I Had This Evening

Image credits: Txy_

From smartphones to smart homes, coding revolutionized the way we live, work, and connect with the world around us. What stands behind a good program is the development process.

It is usually a multi-nuanced one, but looks something like this: Selecting the methodology or the roadmap of the project, gathering the requirements needed, deciding how the software will operate, building the model, and constructing the code. Then comes the primary testing phase, which then leads to the fixing of any and all defects that come up. Once all that is done, the software is deployed and further upgraded following user demands. From that point on the software is maintained to sustain the highest quality.

#2 Now That’s Just Hurtful

Image credits: CapnSurvivalist

#3 My B.m.i Is Apparently Infinite

Image credits: _CxxcT_GD_

Programming failure sounds funny enough, but what stands behind it? Surprisingly, 75% of developers feel that new software projects will fail in the initial stage. A report by Standish Group states that 49% of new cases fail, with 47% of them being challenged and only 4% successful. After all, who stands behind the screen is just a human: “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.” – Paul Ehrlich.

#4 I Think Windows 11 Is Trying To Say Teams Is Running

Image credits: Gm_C_NL

#5 When You’re In The Club And Can’t Come Up With Any Dance Moves

Image credits: TilodR

#6 Ah Yes, A Blue Box

Image credits: FrostyWasStolen

Surely, you’ve seen funny software fails on Reddit, but here we have some of the most famous and costly software disasters of all time.

Burning Mars Climate Orbiter. In 1998, NASA launched a $125 million robotic space probe to monitor the Martian atmosphere, climate, and surface. After 286 days, it went into orbital insertion, and communication with the spacecraft was lost. The navigation pushed the orbiter too close to the Mars atmosphere where it burned and broke into pieces.

#7 Damn Forgot To Update My Graphics Card Driver For The Last 78 Years My Bad

Image credits: BusinessMonkee

#8 No, I Don’t Think That’s A Jam Bun

Image credits: Newmaker_Sei_Zen

#9 Half Life Corrupted My Screenshot And Created Some Metal Album Cover Material

Image credits: screm404

Another software fail happened when hundreds of cancer patients got exposed to massive radiation doses. Since 2000, many hospitals across the USA used the Therac-25 medical radiation therapy device to treat people suffering from cancer. However, due to the incorrect input of radiation dosage data into the software, patients received radiation doses up to 100 times higher than the intended amount. Tragically, this error led to the loss of 10 lives and caused severe injuries to more than 20 people.

#10 Just… Don’t Go There

Image credits: theflavienb28

#11 Where Can I Buy

Image credits: notarealsu35

#12 I’m Really Alerted After This

Image credits: Carliin1

World War III almost happened because of a software fail. As frightening as it sounds, in 1983, the Soviets believed that American missiles were attacking them. Their systems misinterpreted sunlight reflections off the tops of clouds as missile launches. Fortunately, later an officer of the Soviet Air Defense Forces identified the error and proclaimed it a false alarm.

#13 Greek Architecture

Image credits: Azrodis

#14 Memojis Be Like…

Image credits: gregthegollum

#15 The Emoji Looks As Confused As I Am

Image credits: cassert24

Even buildings collapse because of software failures. In 1978, Hartford Civic Center Coliseum crumbled from the weight of snow, costing $70 million + $20 million in damage to the local economy. The CAD programmer made a mistake in the design of the coliseum by incorrectly assuming that the roof supports would only experience pure compression. Additionally, the computer model indicated that all the top chords received lateral bracing, but only the interior frame met the criteria.

#16 Iphoneos Subtly Trying To Tell You Your Sleep Schedule Is F**ked Up

Image credits: ioslove14

#17 Do Negative Numbers Count?

Image credits: TheLastConqueror

#18 Ah Yes, I Agree Bread Kinda Is That

Image credits: TransportationBrave7

As we gaze into the future, a few upcoming trends are likely to happen in software development.

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic for some time now. We can expect it to be more common in software development, like creating better applications and helping with data analysis and forecasting.

Another interesting future trend will be the ‘Internet of things’. This basically means a network of ‘things’ – connecting everything by exchanging sensor data between them. Examples could be: smartphones, cars, household appliances, and industrial machinery.

Finally, Virtual reality. It is already being used in gaming, education, and entertainment. In the future, we can also expect this technology to become more common in software development. It will help simulate environments and test products in real time.

#19 2020 Didn’t End In Romania

Image credits: reddit.com

#20 My Phone Thinks It’s Running On Nothing But Storage

Image credits: gregthwuen

#21 This Planetarium’s Computer Crashed

Image credits: Corporal98

As amusing as r/softwaregore is, the subreddit serves as a reminder of all the challenges developers face, and if anything, it makes us appreciate them even more. Software is both: or friend and an enemy, the coding just decide us think which is which.