Introduction
Engineers can be hilarious – albeit a bit dry and cynical. Engineers are problem-solvers by nature. Much of their humor involves problem solving. Here are a few things that came up this morning that I thought would be worthwhile sharing here.
Troubleshooting Phases
I had a hardware engineer in my group who had a 12-step problem solving process that he used EVERY SINGLE TIME. He wrote code for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), so his problem resolutions always involved changing some FPGA source code. Here is his troubleshooting process.
| Step Number | Name |
| Step 1 | That Can't Happen, It Must Be a Test Problem. |
| Step 2 | Blame Software |
| Step 3 | Doubt - Could I Have Made an Error? |
| Step 4 | Blame Software |
| Step 5 | How Did This Ever Work? |
| Step 6 | Despair |
| Step 7 | Hope |
| Step 8 | Deep Despair |
| Step 9 | Blame Software |
| Step 10 | The Return of Hope |
| Step 11 | Intense Effort |
| Step 12 | It Was a One-Line of Source Code Change |
Quality
We had a discussion this morning on software quality. It became obvious that there were levels of software quality. Here is what I gleaned from that conversation.
| Level | Description | Comment |
| Level 1 | Crap-Like | The software has some good points, but there are some serious issues. |
| Level 2 | Crapola | The software appears to have some good points, but deep-down it really sucks. |
| Level 3 | Polished Crap | This is software that really does suck, but people have worked really hard to make it seem like it doesn't. |
| Level 4 | Crap | The software is so bad that it really does stink. |
| Level 5 | Total Crap | How does code like this get written? |
Problem Solving Progress
I had a manager under me that used the following scale to describe how close we were to solving a problem. His approach also came up in a meeting this morning.
| Level 1 | Description |
| Level 1 | We have no idea where the problem is; it could be anywhere. |
| Level 2 | We have the bug isolated to a hemisphere (Eastern or Western). |
| Level 3 | We know the bug is somewhere in this area. |
| Level 4 | We have the bug cornered. |
| Level 5 | We have the bug in our cross-hairs. |
| Level 6 | The bug is begging for mercy. |
Yes, this was a typical morning.