The computer doesn't always know what's right

http://www.nitrospaz.com/personal-projects/the-computer-doesnt-always-know-whats-right

by skellertor • 9 years ago

48 8 9 years ago

dogruck• 9 years ago

Nice article. I’ll admit that, when I clicked, I was anticipating a rant about “the algos.”

Does anyone else feel a bit panicked these days when you search for an answer online, and not see any pointers? The feeling of, “whelp... I guess... I’ll have to diagnose and solve this myself...”

pjc50• 9 years ago

I'm somewhat used to that, due to working in legacy / embedded / unpopular software areas :) Maybe I should do a writeup of some of the more significant investigations. Such as the six months spent (intermittently) on a bug reported only as "touchscreen sometimes stops responding".

In fact, returning to the car theme, I was recently able to save myself a considerable amount of money by using Youtube videos to disassemble my dashboard, re-solder the joints on the back of the instrument cluster, and re-fit it. The only difficulty was matching the video to the exact model of car. I didn't expect to find it, but there was a video with a few dozen views of exactly what I needed. Previously I'd have had to resort to Haynes manuals, which are excellent but not quite as good as being able to watch someone else do it.

mar77i• 9 years ago

Such as the six months spent (intermittently) on a bug reported only as "touchscreen sometimes stops responding".

Would definitely read. I've read stuff like that on retro computing forums or from malware analysts and there's probably nothing more intriguing about our trade of code-slinging than that.

PuffinBlue• 9 years ago

YouTube actually has quite a genre of vehicle diagnostic experts. It's not uncommon to come across a slew of error codes that are really the emergent property of another undiagnosed failure. It can be quite theraputic to watch the diagnostic process.

One that comes to mind recently is this one from ScannerDanner and a Chevy truck:

https://youtu.be/k_KJuqR1gKQ?t=1m50s

And another from Pine Hollow Auto Diagnostics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv79lQ64DGA

I definitely enjoy the process these guys follow.

deathanatos• 9 years ago

While the article is about cars directly, the conclusion is widely applicable:

You need to have a diagnostic approach to solving problems.

And yet I have run across so many engineers willing to blame outputs they do not understand, instead of seeking to understand what it is that they system is trying to say (and often, the message is perfectly clear, if one takes the time to read it) or systems that they do not understand or have caused them pain (often from their lack of understanding) in the past.

I find myself constantly batting down "hypotheses" to the problem that do not even answer the symptoms of the problem at hand! At the very least, solutions need to make sense, and attempt to explain the circumstances.

(I would argue that the quoted sentence above borders on tautology. Yet, it is a valuable, especially in the context of the article, explanation of problem solving and critical thinking.)

fenwick67• 9 years ago

If the author is reading this thread, please change your body copy to a more readable font face / weight / color.

Ginguin• 9 years ago

ctrl-f "font"

Yes, please.

nitrospaz• 9 years ago

I changed the font, thanks for the feedback.

The computer doesn't always know what's right

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