History vs. Science

Many years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I got a job at a small firm in Southern California servicing Basic-4 minicomputers. I wasn't familiar with the equipment, but I was good at electronics and troubleshooting. I could read the schematics, and I knew how things worked.

One of our other field service technicians was a guy named Ken. He'd come up with charming colloquialisms like, "Wow, that's slicker than snot on a doorknob!" He didn't know how to read schematics, or how the electronics worked. But he'd been on the job for quite a while, and he knew from experience what the likely causes were for a given symptom. I thought he was an idiot.

I was an arrogant little prick, with the bedside manner of House, M.D. It probably wasn't much fun to work with me, but I did know what I was doing. When I went out on a call, I'd look at the symptoms, and I'd get out my oscilloscope and logic probe and digital voltmeter and I'd start analyzing the circuit and following bad signals back to their source until I knew what had failed, and I could often whip out my soldering iron and repair a board on the spot.

Ken, on the other hand, went out with a box of known good boards (his "gold boards"), and he'd swap them out until the machine worked again. With his experience, he often knew which one to try first. Despite my "superior" understanding of the electronics, Ken could often fix a machine faster than I could. It was irritating.

You could call Ken's technique "faith" or "superstition"; but it wasn't. He just used different strategies than I did. Over time, I mellowed and came to realize that no one strategy is perfect. Sometimes you need a hammer, and sometimes you need a screwdriver. A good craftsman keeps several tools in his kit and keeps his tools sharp. Ken's way was good, and my way was good, but knowing both ways is even better.

Sorry I was such a jerk, Ken. Wherever you are.


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