You'd enjoy Richard de Crespigny book, QF72, about the A380 in-flight engine explosion incident. One of the clearest reasons he could save the aircraft, is tha

You'd enjoy Richard de Crespigny book, QF72, about the A380 in-flight engine explosion incident. One of the clearest reasons he could save the aircraft, is that he spent some time in France, meeting w/ the designers of the different subsystems, and asked (and was answered clearly) tons of 'why' questions. Yeah yeah 'how' is interesting but in the end, the 'why' is far more important, but also rememberable, and it helps when the thing is broken or half broken and you have to operate it. And I mean the original 'why', not the post-hoc rationalization! 'oh yeah the special "attack-beak" on each wing is there to give more portance during the landing phase, now that it is in "secured mode" (blocked) I will miss % portance during my approach I need to adjust'. And it is secured in case of hydraulic failure or WTF to avoid triggering spuriously during high altitude flight, etc. I was lucky some time ago to have him comment on a twitter thread about automation and human-aircraft interactions, when I talked about 'why's: https://twitter.com/RichardDeCrep/status/1358560210927771649 https://twitter.com/RichardDeCrep/status/1358560210927771649 Record the whys, that's what jira, code comments, design and justification documents are for! Forget the myriad uml, merise, whatever young people use these days, give me 'why's ! I highly recommend that book and anything from de Crespigny.