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Any developer, hardware or software, will tell you that reproducibility is the key to solving a problem. But reproducibility can be vague and sometimes, when y

Any developer, hardware or software, will tell you that reproducibility is the key to solving a problem. But reproducibility can be vague and sometimes, when you're under pressure, you can be quick to point to something and declare "aha! that's the root cause!" and be totally wrong.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Or even be totally right, but there's more to the problem. Peeling the onion. We hope that fixing one piece of code will solve three or four exhibited problems. But it's often more like, change three or four pieces of code to make one problem go away. As Heinlein is purported to have written, "If it's not one thing, it's two things."
- eesmith 4y ago
  I've read about 98% of everything Heinlein published[1], and don't recognize that quote. An archive.org search find a few examples, like this 1979 Harlequin short story https://archive.org/details/romanticshortsto00harl/page/30/mode/2up?q=%22two+things%22 https://archive.org/details/romanticshortsto00harl/page/30/m... If Heinlein did use a phrase like it, I expect my searches would have found it. It doesn't appear to be a common saying, so I'm curious how you acquired the association between it and Heinlein. It doesn't seems like a common misquote people end up spreading. [1] I've only read "Tramp Royale" up to the point where they left the US, I haven't read the "stinkeroos", nor his posthumous novels, nor most of what Wikipedia lists under "Other short fiction", nor a couple more non-fiction publications.
  - morphle 4y ago
    I agree, having read most Heinlein ever published (even including his unfortunate right wing and conservative and unscientific ramblings that wasted my time), I never came across "If it is not one thing, it is two things."
    - joshmarinacci 4y ago
      Maybe Niven?
      - morphle 4y ago
        I'm even more sure it was not written by Larry Niven. I read most of Heinlein twice but read Niven at least 4 times.
    - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
      Maybe Spider Robinson?
      - eesmith 4y ago
        If Spider Robinson used that quote, I presume my text searches of archive.org would have found it. Yet across the different search combinations, I only found a dozen-odd books, none by an SF author. Why do you associate it with something written by a famous author? I don't see anything which suggests its a well-known phrase. Google and DDG together found fewer than 100 pages using that quote. Most appear to have been spontaneous creation. One attributed it to "a Norwegian friend." (This all assumes my search terms were meaningful.)
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > As Heinlein is purported to have written, "If it's not one thing, it's two things." By Any Other Name, Spider Robinson: " And McLaughlin rescued the moment, in that split second before Higgins’s control would have cracked, doing his prizefighter imitation. “Aw Jeez, Tom, that hard cider. If it ain’t one thing, it’s two things. Go ahead; we’ll keep your shoes warm.” " for completeness, it's a play on the more common expression, perhaps best summed up in the modern age by Snoop Dogg in Pump, Pump: "if it ain't one thing it's a MFing nother"
metaphor 4y ago
Agreed. While reading the thread, a red flag[1] was immediately raised in my mind when: > We couldn't reproduce it, but we did come up with a theory for why it was happening. ...going right into mechanical subsystem redesign. Surely a cursory review would have challenged such a reactionary proposal: What meaningful steps were taken to falsify the prevailing theory? There's something implied about discipline when this vacant QA Tester Hardware/Software engineering position description[2] bundles verification/validation test roles on the design/development/production/field support fronts with the following caveat: > Initially, you'll be the only QA engineer and will perform active testing of new product releases in our lab and in the field at construction sites. Also, non-rhetorical question: Selenium for industrial hardware test automation...is that really a thing in the wild? [1] https://twitter.com/tessalau/status/1604018887603138561 https://twitter.com/tessalau/status/1604018887603138561 [2] https://boards.greenhouse.io/dustyrobotics/jobs/5373908003 https://boards.greenhouse.io/dustyrobotics/jobs/5373908003
askvictor 4y ago
At least in software you can (mostly) easily re-create the conditions that lead to the problem... Hardware exists in the real world, not a virtual one, so while it's possible to find correlations if you've got enough data, getting a definitive root cause can be much harder as you've got to create the real world.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Or even be totally right, but there's more to the problem. Peeling the onion. We hope that fixing one piece of code will solve three or four exhibited problems. But it's often more like, change three or four pieces of code to make one problem go away. As Heinlein is purported to have written, "If it's not one thing, it's two things."

eesmith 4y ago
I've read about 98% of everything Heinlein published[1], and don't recognize that quote. An archive.org search find a few examples, like this 1979 Harlequin short story https://archive.org/details/romanticshortsto00harl/page/30/mode/2up?q=%22two+things%22 https://archive.org/details/romanticshortsto00harl/page/30/m... If Heinlein did use a phrase like it, I expect my searches would have found it. It doesn't appear to be a common saying, so I'm curious how you acquired the association between it and Heinlein. It doesn't seems like a common misquote people end up spreading. [1] I've only read "Tramp Royale" up to the point where they left the US, I haven't read the "stinkeroos", nor his posthumous novels, nor most of what Wikipedia lists under "Other short fiction", nor a couple more non-fiction publications.
- morphle 4y ago
  I agree, having read most Heinlein ever published (even including his unfortunate right wing and conservative and unscientific ramblings that wasted my time), I never came across "If it is not one thing, it is two things."
  - joshmarinacci 4y ago
    Maybe Niven?
    - morphle 4y ago
      I'm even more sure it was not written by Larry Niven. I read most of Heinlein twice but read Niven at least 4 times.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    Maybe Spider Robinson?
    - eesmith 4y ago
      If Spider Robinson used that quote, I presume my text searches of archive.org would have found it. Yet across the different search combinations, I only found a dozen-odd books, none by an SF author. Why do you associate it with something written by a famous author? I don't see anything which suggests its a well-known phrase. Google and DDG together found fewer than 100 pages using that quote. Most appear to have been spontaneous creation. One attributed it to "a Norwegian friend." (This all assumes my search terms were meaningful.)
fsckboy 4y ago
> As Heinlein is purported to have written, "If it's not one thing, it's two things." By Any Other Name, Spider Robinson: " And McLaughlin rescued the moment, in that split second before Higgins’s control would have cracked, doing his prizefighter imitation. “Aw Jeez, Tom, that hard cider. If it ain’t one thing, it’s two things. Go ahead; we’ll keep your shoes warm.” " for completeness, it's a play on the more common expression, perhaps best summed up in the modern age by Snoop Dogg in Pump, Pump: "if it ain't one thing it's a MFing nother"

metaphor 4y ago

Agreed. While reading the thread, a red flag[1] was immediately raised in my mind when: > We couldn't reproduce it, but we did come up with a theory for why it was happening. ...going right into mechanical subsystem redesign. Surely a cursory review would have challenged such a reactionary proposal: What meaningful steps were taken to falsify the prevailing theory? There's something implied about discipline when this vacant QA Tester Hardware/Software engineering position description[2] bundles verification/validation test roles on the design/development/production/field support fronts with the following caveat: > Initially, you'll be the only QA engineer and will perform active testing of new product releases in our lab and in the field at construction sites. Also, non-rhetorical question: Selenium for industrial hardware test automation...is that really a thing in the wild? [1] https://twitter.com/tessalau/status/1604018887603138561 https://twitter.com/tessalau/status/1604018887603138561 [2] https://boards.greenhouse.io/dustyrobotics/jobs/5373908003 https://boards.greenhouse.io/dustyrobotics/jobs/5373908003

askvictor 4y ago

At least in software you can (mostly) easily re-create the conditions that lead to the problem... Hardware exists in the real world, not a virtual one, so while it's possible to find correlations if you've got enough data, getting a definitive root cause can be much harder as you've got to create the real world.