On Tuesday, March 4, 2014 9:22:36 AM UTC-5, Robert Green wrote:
IOW, a decent technical ability but not good diagnostic skills. One thing I

like about Usenet is that it's very easy to evaluate the problem-solving

ability of most posters by the solutions they recommend. Some people don't

bother to read the question thoroughly (although to be fair, many enter a

thread well after the "setup" has been described) and others don't consider

the circumstances of the OP. As you've noted many times, people often post

woefully incomplete descriptions of their problems. That doesn't stop some

people from offering specific solutions. (-:.

I work with some engineers like that. They're pretty good at design, they'll single mindedly focus until they solve the problem, however difficult.

And they think they're good at diagnosis, but they're a disaster. They fixate on the first idea, and then that same single minded focus prevents them from considering any other root cause, regardless of how much evidence says they're wrong.

The key to good troubleshooting is to resist finding the cause as long as possible. As soon as you know what's wrong, you are incapable of seeing the other symptoms that prove it couldn't be that.