The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Monthly Aphorism: On Debugging

    • Whenever you find a problem, fix it

    Mad Phil taught me an absolutely fundamental rule for debugging electronic gadgets: when you find something unexpected, it’s either:

    • part of the problem you’re trying to solve
    • another problem you haven’t discovered yet

    In either case, ignoring evidence that something was just a little off or that you didn’t quite understand or that didn’t seem important was a sure recipe for missing the cause of the problem.

    That algorithm could trigger a depth-first search that distracts you from the real problem, which was where Mad Phil’s magic came in: he knew where the problem was and simply carved his way through the underbrush toward it.