
The computer doesn't always know what's right - skellertor
http://www.nitrospaz.com/personal-projects/the-computer-doesnt-always-know-whats-right
======
PuffinBlue
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](https://youtu.be/k_KJuqR1gKQ?t=1m50s)

And another from Pine Hollow Auto Diagnostics:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv79lQ64DGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv79lQ64DGA)

I definitely enjoy the process these guys follow.

------
dogruck
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
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
> 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.

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

~~~
nitrospaz
I changed the font, thanks for the feedback.

