Blocked for hours is you learning and totally OK if you are learning. If one is operating open loop and stabbing at configuration options in a brute force manne

Blocked for hours is you learning and totally OK if you are learning. If one is operating open loop and stabbing at configuration options in a brute force manner to "make something work quickly" that isn't learning. Not saying you did this, but I do see this in a number of folks. They don't learn, and they don't form a model of the system. Those folks can be replaced by an LLM and Z3.