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Comment by pixl97 | Hacker News Reader

Taking mechanical stuff apart and fixing it is one of these areas.

One of the more recent ones I watched is taking apart large wenches on a bulldozer. There is a metal plate with two bolts on it you have to take off. If you don't know what you're doing you take both bolts out and it flies apart losing stuff because there is a spring behind the mechanism. If you know what you're doing you take out one bolt then put in a bolt twice as long before taking out the second bolt, the long bolt catches the mechanism and releases the spring tension keeping all your parts in one place.

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I miss programming languages that fit this model. I remember learning how Dictionary/Map hashing by just putting

d := Dictionary new. d at: 13 put: 42. d at: 5 put: 7. d at: 13 put: 57.

in a workspace and hitting ‘debug it’.

Modern programming ecosystems make this type of learn by discovery/exploration so much harder.

A lot of ecosystem eschew the debugger from their workflow. The best experience is with Common Lisp (slime) and Smalltalk, where you can inspect the variable from any snippet of code. It's quite nice too in IDEA (java) where you can put a breakpoint and investigate a suspicious behavior of a method.

Would that not be documented by the manufacturer somewhere?

Of course, but most people don't have the manuals if they're fixing half broken rusty old winches

I was under the impression we were working with large wenches, not winches.

There is no manual for wenches, and all men are novices

Yes, but service technicians that are paid by the job often find ways to do a job in far less time using a different approach than the manufacturer suggests.

An example: I used to own a Saturn S-series. The manufacturer estimate for replacing the alternator was something like 4 hours of labor, and involved removing the power steering pump (which was above the alternator.)

It was possible to replace the alternator in about 30 minutes by removing the front passenger wheel and mud shield, and then accessing the alternator directly.

Manufacturer like to say things like 'use the repressor tool #4325' which is no longer produced and costs a small fortune, rather than a $5 bolt.

(author here) Ooooohhh this is a great example, I love it. Software can be so abstract with the footguns sometimes, but physical mechanisms are so much more intuitive

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