- What’s new and different?
Father Vaughn always posed that deceptively simple question when asked for help with a new problem.
What he knew, and what we eventually discovered, was that the most recent Thing-That-Changed generally had something to do with what was now broken. Even if the difference didn’t seem related in any way, tracking down its effects was always a highly productive use of your time.
His question applies to non-technical problems, too… especially when you think nothing has changed.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
5 responses to “Monthly Aphorism: On Finding Errors”
Oh, so true! Even (or, as you say especially, when “it couldn’t be that”)!
I heartily agree with that. I work with computers for a living and this invariable holds true.
A corollary to that is that when you’re making changes, if possible, change one thing at a time.
Or, perhaps, change at most one thing at a time.
I find it educational to run the same test several times and get different results!
And then there’s the series where you change one thing at a time and nothing affects the output. Then you check to see which pin isn’t making contact with its socket…
[…] before, Reversal properly inhales the filament at the end of the previous layer. What’s new & different, though, is that the nozzle moves upward 0.33 mm immediately after finishing the Reversal motion. […]