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On Sun, 16 Feb 2003, Derek Martin wrote: > I think that despite this reality, overall there is a different force at > work. The reset option is often the first choice of people who just > want it to work NOW, whereas methodical troubleshooting is the tool of > those who have learned from experience that determining the cause of the > problem and fixing it (if possible) is the only way to prevent the > problem from intruding upon your productivity over and over again... Kinda ironic, really -- the ones that are impatient to get back to work are the ones that ultimately are sitting around the longest. :) The sad thing is that there is a common thread to the approach of both sides. Both sides appreciate the digital, finite nature of computing and the ability to go back to a known state in order to determine a problem by process of elimination. It's just that one side says "Ok, let's go backward one step at a time so that when we solve it, we have a pretty good idea that the one variable we changed is the culprit(*)" whereas the other one says "Take away all the variables, and then put back what I need in order to work, and if it works, then some of the stuff that's gone now must have been the problem." Is it important to understand the cause? That's a matter of philosophical debate. Some will say "Why? It's fixed, ergo the if it aint broke rule applies." But geeks are different. I once described "hacker" as "someone who can't *not* solve a problem, once they decide it is worth solving." And a broken system is a very personal problem indeed. Duane
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