Fixed it

[Duane Morin]

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