[ejames]

Ah, but that is human error - the error of the person who used a program in a manner for which it was not intended! They erred in not understanding that the program was written years ago and not intended for that use. Of course, then it is not the error of the human who wrote the program.

This, however, is the reason why the phrase "human error" is mainly applied to simple, 'random' mistakes such as typos, fat-fingering a button, or misfiling a paper - errors that anyone can make, simply by being a forgetful human - rather than the literal meaning of "any error committed by a human". Stretched to cover every mistake made by a homo sapiens, the phrase loses all descriptive power.

So, to clarify - all errors made by humans are "human error" in some sense, but that renders the classification meaningless, so we should distinguish between simple, common errors and more worrisome ones by using words other than "human error". Your example of a programmer that did not foresee a future desired use could be referred to as a "requirements error" if the programmer reasonably could have or should have foreseen it, as "operator error" if the person using the program is meant to be trained to understand its proper uses, or a "misallocation of resources error" if the problem exists because not enough budget or time was assigned to keep the program aligned with current necessary uses.

I sometimes feel that a fair number of disagreements or disputes in the comments of Hacker News are best resolved by checking whether we are using words in exactly the best way.