Glitch

A glitch is a fault that produces an unexpected result, commonly due to errors in programming/scripting in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games. More generally, all types of systems including human organizations and nature experience glitches. Many glitches are harmless, short lived or sometimes not fixed. However many flaws eventually lead to errors that break the programming, known as bugs.

A glitch, which is slight and often temporary, differs from a more serious bug which is a genuine functionality-breaking problem. Alex Pieschel, writing for Arcade Review, said: "'bug' is often cast as the weightier and more blameworthy pejorative, while 'glitch' suggests something more mysterious and unknowable inflicted by surprise inputs or stuff outside the realm of code".^[1] The word itself is sometimes humorously described as being short for "gremlins lurking in the computer hardware".^[2]