I could perhaps tell you a story of two star-crossed lovers. Their romance. Their joy. Their tragedy. Their pain. Their anguish. Their untimely deaths.
I could tell you this story, but it might be called incomplete, because these unhappy two are merely players on a greater stage. Perhaps the greater story is about two houses. Their bitterness. Their history. Their sons and daughters lost. Their murders. Their vengeances. Their honor. Their shame.
There is a greater story still, in which the houses merely play. It is a story of cities and nations, kingdoms and empires. Their rises and falls. Their mighty wars. Their explorations. It is a story that spans the entire globe.
Every story told is held within a larger. The layered stories grow until they extend beyond the teller and their telling stops.
Cutting through the layers are single threads which join the tales, single paths which rise from sphere to sphere until they reach the final edges of their universe.
The tragedy of two young lovers whose deaths bring down their houses.
The splintering of houses which sows chaos through their cities and turmoil through their nations.
The collapse of nations into civil strife and a war that spans the globe for a hundred years, a hatred that last a thousand.
Or, I could tell you a story about two small bytes.
Two small bytes out of billions, joining together to form a single word, one instruction out of millions. They are the smallest part of a tiny function in a short file. Their file belongs to a component which works in a system.
Eventually their story grows beyond their universe, past the reaches of their machine. Their system is written by a team; held by a project. The project has a sponsor. It has stakeholders – users, related projects, executives.
The company is owned by a larger company. It plays in a larger market in a still greater economy.
The team have spouses and families who share their joy, grief and stress. It is a human story.
It is the fragile nature of software that when the two bytes fail, the instruction fails.
The function throws an exception, the module returns with an error.
The system crashes and the users swear.
The sponsor explodes and the executives execute punitive action.
The company shudders, the market takes notice and the economy recedes.
The team members go drinking before returning home to harangue their spouses and children.
C’mon folks, test your bugfixes already 