I don't think it was... maybe? I've seen people hack circuits they way they hack code: keep trying small tweaks until it works. Then when they connect two circu

I don't think it was... maybe? I've seen people hack circuits they way they hack code: keep trying small tweaks until it works. Then when they connect two circuits and it doesn't work, they go back to the fundamental RTFM. It could also be the skillset: circuits are more a creative art form, logic is more... logic. (But that doesn't always hold because I've encountered cache/CAM RTL designs that were beautiful.) Failure modes are different. A transistor can go bad if you accidentally drove it too hard, so now you might need to replace every part until the circuit works. And maybe one of the xtors in your box is bad. Or maybe a wire isn't making a good contact. Just the physical aspects alone without bringing an oscilloscope into the mix ("Why is my signal so noisy? Oh, it's the fluorescent lights, or the cheap USB hub noise in 400MHz spectrum, or the wall-wart...") can be maddening. Mostly I think the people I helped out seemed to forget that "digital" only exists inside the O/S, whereas the real world is analog, and real-world debuggers are more abstract than using, say, gdb or journalctl. But then I work with MY mentors, and they have an even larger set of debug skills based on extensive component knowledge that reminds me of chess grandmasters who know all the openings. E.g, being told I'm using the wrong OpAmp because that particular device's temperature sensitivity isn't suitable for frequency-range I'm designing.