Code Curiosities

The $125 Million Comma: How a Typo Crashed a Spacecraft and Changed Programming Forever

Episode Summary

In 1962, a single misplaced punctuation mark in NASA's code sent the Mariner 1 spacecraft careening off course, forcing its destruction just minutes after launch. We explore how this legendary programming blunder led to modern software testing practices and why the most expensive typo in history wasn't actually a comma at all.