> > I prefer bug-finding mistakes, but of course one sometimes has to debug
> > his own mindset.
> >
>
> This is a mindset adjustment story...
>
Here's another story that should probably be filed under mindset adjustment.

Back in the early 80's I was a technician for a small company. We had
recently hired a new engineer (Steve). He had designed some rather complex
boards that were loaded with 74xx chips. One day I am walking through the
shop and I see Steve with prints scattered all around on a large bench.
Steve also has one of the new boards hooked up and was surrounded by several
scopes and a logic analyzer. Being the curious sort I walked over and said
"What's up Steve, What're you workin' on". He proceeds to explain how this
particular board isn't working properly and he is tracking down why. He then
tells me to stick around for a while because I might learn something - Ok
sounds good to me. I stood and watched over Steve's shoulder for a minute or
two before I asked what he was doing with the logic analyzer (At that time I
had never used one). Steve proceeds to start talking about all sorts of
stuff that went right over my head.
Meanwhile I had noticed something that didn't look right - I tried to point
it out, but Steve insisted on giving me a big long explanation about how he
was going to use the logic analyzer and the scopes to trace signals and
such. My response was along the lines of "Well, yeah I suppose you *could*
go about it *that* way". His reply was a somewhat snotty "Well since you're
so F'ing smart how would you go about finding the problem". Without
hesitation I pointed to one of the ICs on the board and answered, "Well if
it was me I'd start by taking this chip out of the socket and turning it
around so pin #1 is in the right place". What? Huh? Steve was stunned,
pissed and embarrassed all at the same time. Steve knew way more about how
that board worked than I ever did, after all, he designed it. I just
happened to notice a chip in backwards.

So I guess the moral is "Don't overlook the easy stuff".

Someone a while back (Wouter maybe?) told a tale of debugging for a while
with the wrong PIC chip installed. I've done the same thing myself. Very
often I concentrate too much on the complex stuff and overlook the easy
stuff.

You can learn a lot from your own mistakes... but it's a lot easier to learn
from observing other peoples mistakes.


-- Mark



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