Release It Book Club Chapter 3: Fault, Error, Failure

In Release It! chapter 3, Nygard makes distinctions between faults, errors, and failures:

• Fault: “A condition that creates an incorrect internal state in your software.”
• Error: “Visibly incorrect behavior.”
• Failure: “An unresponsive system.”

“Triggering a fault opens the crack. Faults become errors, and errors provoke failures.. That’s how the cracks propagate.”

What do you think of these distinctions and this terminology for system failures?

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In the past, I have used these terms interchangeably. I suppose I mostly refer to errors. It may be handy to have more precise terms to describe these stages of failure.