* Posts by Flocke Kroes

4531 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2007

Happy birthday, Python, you're 30 years old this week: Easy to learn, and the right tool at the right time

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At last! Reasonable reasons!

Wasn't sure where to put the reply as several people get frustrated by their editor of choice being unhelpful when it is time to change the indentation level of some code.

I am very old. Back when computers were made flint chips the first text editor I used had some very handy features that I did not find elsewhere when I was selecting an editor for Linux. My personal "learning to do something non-trivial in C" project was a text editor and I put the features I liked into it. Specifically:

^u: Start making a new record of key presses

^v: Stop extending that record of key presses

^p: (Includes an implicit ^v) Play back that record of key presses

So when in python the sequence [home]^u[space][space][space][space][home][down] followed by holding down ^p adds a level of indentation to a code block. Likewise the above with [space] changed to [delete] removes a level of indentation.

I can see that without basic features of tools from the '80s mixing python indentation with modern IDEs can quickly lead to frustration.

Thanks to everyone who actually explained what the problem is.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Dumb design decisions

Your CPU design straw man is utter drivel on every possible level. CPU designers get as far as selecting the bit patterns for the op-codes that make up machine code. You are thinking about assembly language that an assembler program converts into machine code. Some CPUs have had multiple different assembly languages that convert to the same machine code. The standard for just about every language is plain text created by a text editor. Text editors do not have the concept of encoding bold into a source file. Some use bold for syntax highlighting but that is not something a compiler, assembler or interpreter can see.

The first law of databases is that when the same information is stored in two different places at least one copy is out of date. C/C++ mark blocks of statements to the compiler by enclosing them in braces. By custom, white space is used to make blocks of statements clearly visible to humans. Ideally the same information is encoded by braces and white space. In the real world, at least one copy becomes out of date leading to a mismatch between how the compiler and a programmer consider the program should behave. This is followed by surprise, bad language, the gnashing of teeth and missed deadlines.

Python uses the same white space decisions programmers use to make source code human readable to mark blocks of statements to the interpreter. As the information is only encoded by one mechanism it cannot become out of sync with another mechanism. Human readability is preserved with the benefit of preventing a large selection of bugs and syntax errors that are a pain to deal with in C/C++.

If you have an actual reason why python's use of white space is a problem please present it without false analogies or straw men. I am genuinely interested but so far no-one has been able to provide me with any good reason for their irrational hatred.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Why do some people not like python's indentation=code block container

So: irrational hatred, prejudice and a need to cling to pointless harmful traditions?

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Why do some people not like python's indentation=code block container

The style guide recommends code blocks are indented with a multiple of 4 spaces and that tabs should only be used for existing code that consistently uses tabs.

Python2 accepts a mixture of tabs and spaces. If your text editor is set to tabs every 8 columns then appearance and behaviour will be the same. The style guide recommends using -t or -tt to detect inconsistent uses of tabs and spaces and to fix them by converting tabs to spaces.

Python3 will raise a TabError exception when a source file contains a mixture of tabs and spaces for indented code blocks.

Some text editors and IDE's are set by default to ignore a programmers's clear and explicit key presses and interpret the [tab] key as what it thinks is the right number of spaces. Some people think that kind of blatant disobedience is tolerable.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Why do some people not like python's indentation=code block container

I have never created or even seen a bug caused by python using the quantity of white space to indicate the start and end of a block of code. Seriously never in decades.

At best missing a { or } in C/C++ causes a compilation error reported at a line utterly unrelated to where the problem is. If the mistake is in a header file the compiler can report multiple different problems in different source files - none of which are the right file to correct. The actual error message hardly ever mentions { or } and it takes years of experience to relate the many possible cryptic messages to the actual cause of the problem. Even when the correct cause of the problem has been conjectured finding where the problem is takes time. Ironically, one tool to partially automate the process is GNU indent: mechanically arranging to the amount of white space to match actual use of braces bounds the flaw to the right function (if you got the right file) by making the block levels as clear as python.

Finding a missing { or } is such a time sink that I minimise the possibility with self discipline: always type the two together then insert the code block between them. Likewise only ever put a statement where a block is permitted if it is astoundingly obvious that even after a thousand years no-one would ever consider the possibility of adding another statement. That limits the chances of the far more nasty problem: a code sequence that is completely valid to the compiler but the indentation implies different flow control to the programmer compared to the actual one that the compiler will see.

I massively appreciate the herculean effort compiler writers have put into improving C/C++ error messages. Imagine what they could have been doing instead if this were a complete non-issue like python.

What is it about making the flow control of a program appear identical to programmers and interpreters that makes some people turn up their noses and walk away?

Atheists warn followers of unholy data leak, hint dark deeds may have tried to make it go away

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Why would anyone want to reproduce that?

Money.

Recovery time objective missed by four weeks, but Parler is back online

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Re: mutually exclusive

No.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: immensely centralized.

Easily fixed. Make a bunch of new platforms. I have good news for you - it's already happened. Now boycott Amazon/Twitter/Facebook by trotting off to Paler.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Protected minorities

According to HellDeskJockey-ret Paler users are swarming back now that their site is back online so Amazon have not silenced Paler users. They are even here whining pathetically because no-one (but SkySilk) wants to be associated with them.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: so many people were coming back

Excellent. Conclusive proof that 'deplatforming' does not silence conservatives at all. If those snowflakes would just stop whining about it we could all move on.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Trashing careers

Firing someone because of race or sexual orientation is wrong because that is not something the employee can change.

Firing someone because of their political opinions is legal. If someone brings their political opinions to work and that causes problems, by all means try explaining but if the disruption is persistent go straight to "your fired" as you have legitimate cause. In theory people can change the political opinions. It may be a rare occurrence but it really has happened.

This goes double if the 'job' is you-tube pundit. Google does not even have employer responsibilities. It has terms of service. Google can apply those terms unevenly at a whim. Basing you career on you-tube has risks that are well publicised. You accept those risks if you choose that career. Google has no duty to provide a career for people who (ab)use their service.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Protected minorities

It isn't.

You can be as prejudiced as you like against Republicans, Democrats and members of Green Party (if you can find one in the USA). Some Republican tried to sue his employer because (according to him) he was fired for being a Republican. The case died promptly because that is a perfectly legitimate reason for firing someone.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Arguing in bad faith yet again

Your link for BLM very clearly does not say what you say it says. The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews accused BLM of spreading hatred, not inciting violence - after a BLM twitter feed made comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. BLM stand right beside you when they claim they are "gagged of the right to critique Zionism".

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Sounds like he wants to give more power to the federal government

At present the Federal government cannot force Twitter to keep Trump's account open. A change in the constitution would be required to give the Federal Government such powers.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Think about what you disagree with

You have the constitutional right to prevent Loser Trump from holding a rally in your back garden without your permission. By withholding such permission you are not preventing him from having rallies, only restricting where he can have them. What makes you think it is sane to take that right away from others?

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Who's the audience?

Exactly. You are making a determined effort to not understand or believe what everyone else here is telling you.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Hard Left's current agenda

I notice your first link is to RT. That is the new name for Russia Today and is state news channel of the Hardest Left country you can find on this planet. You are quite literally echoing the Hard Left's current agenda.

Yet again: your heroes are free to speak. They are not free to shout the message from my bedroom window (or Amazon infrastructure). If any of them try I will exercise my right to freedom of association by showing them the door.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Protected minorities

Homosexuals are a protected minority. If you sell wedding cakes you cannot refuse to sell purely because the purchasers are homosexuals.

Republicans are not a protected minority. You can legally exercise your freedom of association by not selling to or hiring Republicans.

Evangelicals are a protected minority. You cannot refuse them business purely because they are evangelicals. You can refuse to host them every time the make death threats or plan violence.

Microsoft tells Biden administration to adopt Australia’s pay-for-news plan

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Surprised Google hasn't gone for it

Google could decide to negotiate only for news that it likes and not bother to link to anything else. It could pay more to news outlets that consistently make Google look good. Once dependence is achieved they could turn off the money tap and offer to buy the failing business.

The only reason I can think of for the delay is that if you are going to be evil it helps if there is a law in place demanding that you be evil. You can then be thoroughly evil for years until the law gets repealed and as a bonus you cannot get fined for doing what the law required you to do.

The hottest destination for 2021: China probe follows UAE's into Martian orbit

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Russian dragon riders

The plan from the start of commercial crew was that Russia and the US would trade seats on a one-for-one basis without money changing hands. Steps in that direction made last year's news. Congress are to be commended on their tireless marathon effort to delay this exchange by diverting CC funds to SLS.

[Enjoy it while it lasts: The breaking news on the above link currently says "Biden backs Artemis moon program; watchdog says it’ll cost $86" - with the right font browser resolution / font size.]

Web prank horror: Man shot dead while pretending to rob someone at knife-point for a YouTube video

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Re: This is why they should be banned.

Careful or you will get flamed for breaking Poe's law.

Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes. And guess what? Only its own disks exceed 4TB

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Depends

If there is an effective monopoly then it is unlawful to use that monopoly to gain another monopoly for a different product. Monopolies broadcast their crimes by saying their thingumybob comes with a free widget. The widget is not free, it is bundled. You pay for it whether you want it or not because they are the only supplier for the thingumybobs you need. Other widget manufacturers lose sales and go bankrupt because everyone already has enough widgets.

NASA to have another go at firing Space Launch System engines because just over a minute of data won't cut it

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: never quite got to grips with throwing four shuttle main engines in the sea

I have good news for you there!

Aerojet Rocketdyne got a $1.16x10⁹ contract to upgrade the RS-25 design for expendable operation and separate contract to build new 18 engines. After the first 4 SLS launches with the existing engines you can watch the remaining 4 launches secure in the knowledge that 4x $200,000,000 engines were designed to be thrown in the sea. (This does assume that you are sufficiently young and healthy to live long enough to see SLS actually launch.)

Microsoft Edge goes homomorphic: Nobody will see your credentials... but you'll need to sign in to use it

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Automatic reminder

Always use the password "incorrect". If you ever forget your password your computer will remind you what it is

Loser Trump's last financial disclosure docs reveal Tim Cook gave him $5,999 Mac Pro, the 'first' made in Texas

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

To understand Apple prices ...

... you have to understand what their kit is for.

It is not about making phone calls, typing letters or watching pr0n. The unique selling point of Apple is their customers can boast that they can afford to spend silly money for ordinary tech.

Raspberry Pi Foundation moves into microcontrollers with the $4 Pi Pico using homegrown silicon

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Yes WiFi!

Arduino have a R2040+WifiBlueTooth module PCB already assembled. If you check out the Raspberry Pi website you will find there are already several RP2040 based boards (somewhat?) ready.

Engineers blame 'intentionally conservative' test parameters for premature end to Space Launch System hotfire

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: So let me see if I understand...

But I think a renewed focus on space, especially manned spaceflight was a bit of an achievment for Trump.

The successful US manned space flight was Crew Dragon which was half of Obama's Commercial Crew program (It is remotely possible that the other half: Boeing Starliner will be successful too). Trump did do one good thing for US Space flight: he delegated the whole thing to Mike Pence. There are plenty of horrible things to say about Pence (some of which Trump said before he found out no-one else would run with him) but Pence does understand politics and government. My personal bet is Pence came up with bipartisan support for Artemis pork then said "Boots on the Moon by 2024" to Trump. Trump (or Pence?) came up with Jim Bridenstine for the new administrator for NASA. Bridenstine has proved outstandingly competent compared to other Trump appointees. He successfully defended CC budget against attempts to divert it to SLS. He reduced the number of NASA employees who were working for Boeing. CC succeeded because Trump left all the work to others. Artemis is currently 90% pork project, 10% space project. I think Hilary would not have been able to stop it any more than Obama and SLS but she might have got a better deal for US taxpayers.

Thank you for making my point about Starship not being government welfare. Lets take that $1.6B for for CRS1. That bought 12x Cargo Dragons with a payload capacity of 6000kg each to the ISS. As a part of CRS1 NASA also bought 8x Cygnus flights for $1.9B. As Cygnus can only take 2000kg to the ISS it would need 36 flights costing $8.55B. Even if you throw in the other costs you mention related to Cargo and Crew dragons the CRS1 deal with SpaceX still saved NASA $3.3B. Likewise that $12B for EELV payloads would have cost far more from any other supplier. To really rub salt in your wounds, I just included some CRS2 and CC costs without including CRS2 benefits, future CC benefits and the benefit of having cargo taken from ISS to Earth.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: A sensor reading out of range

That was bad writing on my part as a separate problem was a bad redundant sensor. The actual cause of the abort was low hydraulic pressure. That pressure was correctly measured by sensors and the software responded as instructed by shutting down when then pressure dropped below 50psig. There is discussion about whether 50 is the right number. Presumably the simulations showed correct operation at 50 and that the pressure would not drop lower than that hence something about the model is not correct.

(I have since seen an unconfirmed rumour that the low pressure was cause by a valve opening 0.2 seconds late.)

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: So let me see if I understand...

SLS was a bi-partisan effort. Obama cancelled funding for Constellation and wanted to go with fixed cost commercial contracts to supply and staff ISS. The whole of congress threw a tantrum at the loss of Constellation pork and demanded they have their SLS project to handle as they saw fit in return for commercial resupply and commercial crew. By all means blame Obama for CRS and CC but the whole of congress, Democrat and Republican should take credit for SLS and requiring NASA to use existing Space Shuttle parts and manufacturers.

I do not know who said "boots on the Moon by 2024" to Trump, but the result was as anticipated: Trump approved congress supplying mountains of pork to all the usual suspects (but not enough for the project to stand any chance of completing on time).

Starship is running on hype and welfare

I missed that. What percentage of Starship funding comes from the US government? (If you mention government purchases of Falcon 9 launches I will take that as negative funding: {SpaceX launch price} - {cheapest competitor price})

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: So let me see if I understand...

If you test engine gimballing over its full range while in flight you will also test the vehicle's performance in pointy-end-down configuration quickly followed by an ambitious lithobraking manoeuvre. With enough duct tape the booster can be strapped to the test stand and remain flamy-end-down whatever you do with the thrust vector controls.

On the space shuttle the hydraulics had to work days after the hydrogen tank had been emptied and dropped into the ocean so they were powered by hydrazine. Hydrazine is sufficiently unpleasant to work with that hot high pressure hydrogen is actually easier - especially as you have 4x RS-25 engines each producing more than you would ever need to power the hydraulics.

Someone sensible proposed testing this new power system by gimballing the engines over their full range about one minute into the test (when the rocket would start to tip over onto its side when in flight). I assume the relevant politician leaped out of his seat jumped up and down with excitement shouting "Yes! Yes!!", calmed down and ask what was the largest amount of money taxpayers could contribute for this without looking completely silly.

On the plus side the test covered a range of motion that is extremely unlikely on a real flight. The power for the hydraulics is provided by multiple redundant systems and failure of any one would not cause loss of mission, let alone loss of crew. On the minus side this was not a SpaceX experiment with manufacturing test article 9 performed with test article 10 ready, waiting and using much needed space in the high bay. This was a verification of years of simulation and modelling that was supposed to prove the design before any construction even started. A sensor reading out of range shows there is an important detail missing from the model that makes the simulation invalid.

There are two obvious ways to proceed: identify the missing feature of the model, re-do all the simulations, correct the design and manufacture a new booster. Or you could just widen the acceptable ranges on the sensor data.

Normally I would expect congress to wet themselves and vote "YES!" to any opportunity to increase the costs and extend the project for another two years. This time there is a huge deficit, a trashed economy, a pandemic and Republican senators will riot over any spending where the Democrats might possibly be able to take some credit. On top of that SLS's days are numbered by the progress of Starship. Extra delay just reduces progress before cancellation rather than actually increasing the number of welfare cheques to Boeing.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: hit their full power of 109 per cent

100% was the original design power. Improvements were made over the years that the engine remained in service but the power output was still reported as a percentage of then original design power.

Debut firing of NASA's Space Launch System core stage cut short following 'Major Component Failure'

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: converted from being reusable units

There is no need to be suspicious. NASA has to publish how much they are paying for what for. The bad news is some activities get lumped together and we only see the total cost. The legacy Space Shuttle Main Engines are RS-25Ds. Much of the tooling and equipment to manufacture these has gone. The contract to upgrade the design to Minimal Change Expendable SSME (RS-25E) with the option to order 6 was $1.16B. This includes factory space, manufacturing equipment, tooling, test equipment and the staff to operate it all. The contract was later changed to include delivery of 6x RS-25E for a total of $1.5B.

Congress clearly thought designing rocket engine variants was a vote-gaining way to burn taxpayers' money so the contract was upgraded again to include design of the Low Cost Manufacture Expendable SSME (RS-25F) and delivery of a total of 18 new engines (any mix of RS-25E + RS-25F) for an additional $1.79B.

Finally we have a total cost of $3.5B for all the above and assembly and test of one RS-25D from left over parts and collection and storage of the other 15 RS-25Ds. From this we can infer using legacy RS-25Ds costs about $13M each and RS-25E costs about $56M each. Presumably an RS-25F costs less than an RS-25E.

The clear take-away from this is that congress will need find additional uses for the RS-25 series so the hefty NRE expenditure can be justified by dividing it by a larger number of engines. Clearly RS-25 should be used on the upper stage which would require a re-design for lighting the engine without ground support equipment and optimisation for use in vacuum. With a little effort I am sure the design and delivery of 10x RS-25Vs can cost at least $2B.

Beagleboard peeps tease dual-core 64-bit RISC-V computer with GPU, AI acceleration, more for $119

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Interest but no action

Pi rides on the back of Broadcom's TV CPUs: the big TV market reduces the chip cost to all purchasers. Eben Upton used to work at Broadcom, specifically on the GPU and video codec hardware. He was able to get a good quantity price for CPUs (and enough orders to sell that quantity). Over time he has shown Broadcom the value of proper GPL drivers.

The value to us licence religion extremists is as the driver source code is available anyone can maintain it (or hire someone else to maintain it) so Pi hardware can remain useful for years (8 so far). The value to Broadcom is that fanatical license extremists will select their products. The value of the hiding driver source code to chip designers is that they can decide to stop maintaining the driver whenever they want. This gives users three choices:

1) Some (eventually all) on chip devices become unusable.

2) Ever increasing time spent on software maintenance: back port security fixes to an old kernel where the drivers still work and deal with any software that depends on new kernel features you cannot backport without breaking the drivers.

3) Buy new hardware.

Nice sales every two years - but each time the chip designer loses 0.0001% of their customers because a few notice they can avoid that cost and hassle if they select a chip with a full set of GPL drivers.

While the RPi Foundation and Broadcom have a good relationship and Broadcom sticks with ARM, Pi's will remain ARM. Broadcom are likely to stick with ARM unless ARM tries a Softbank and tries to increase the license fees by an unreasonable amount (thank RISC-V that has not happened).

Best of luck to Beagle. I hope they get good quality GPL drivers and the CPU gets lots of other sales so the price drops.

We didn't collude with Twitter to throw Parler off our servers, says AWS in court filing

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Trump's you-tube account has been suspended as well

Larry will have to hurry up and buy TikTok or we may never see Donald Dance the Macarena.

Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?

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Oracle cloud is short of customers

As Larry Ellison likes to give Trump a venue why hasn't Oracle stepped up?

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Cost?

Depends if you are president or someone who believed being a Trump supporter made her bullet proof. For most people it will be somewhere in between.

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Library of congress

Making the failed dictator's Twitter account part of the presidential record meant that the library of congress was required to preserve it in case Twitter chose to exercise their first amendment right to cease making it available to the public for free.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge
Joke

You don't fool us niio. You're really an antifa BLM false flag trying to make Trump supporters look like crazed conspiracy theorists.

SpaceX wins UK regulator Ofcom's approval for its Starlink mobile broadband base stations

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Too Late ?

I was going to ask which christmas but the answer was too obvious: every christmas.

Developers! These 3 weird tricks will make you a global hero

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Re: Silly fonts/colours/layout

lynx fixes a very large number of vile web design decisions.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: We all know how to copy/paste

Left click and drag to select, middle click to paste.

This was the standard that predated Windows but Microsoft could not use it because Windows only understood two mouse buttons (and they could not copy the standard from Apple because Apple only supported one button).

ESA signs on the dotted line for ESPRIT, Europe's Lunar Gateway module

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Great - circle a rock

There's a better place even than L4/L5: LEO. Cheaper to get to and less radiation. If you are going for distributed launch the cheapest part to distribute is propellant because when you get to LEO you already have empty propellant tanks with connectors that used to connect to the ground support equipment already in place to connect to your tanker.

Much of the mass of ISS is all the airlocks needed to connect the modules together. Although you can send a series of modules direct to a high energy orbit it is more cost effective to send one big module that you can only get as far as LEO, refuel and then send it on to where ever you want it.

I think that ultimately there will be business opportunities on the Moon but not this decade. Mass drivers are difficult on Earth because of the atmosphere and Earth is a bit too big for space elevator but both launch/capture methods are much closer to sane for the Moon. Perhaps next decade the Moon will be more reachable but SLS+Orion+LOP-G are certainly not the tools you want to get part way there.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

SLS hot fire on January 17th

What year?

Loser Trump is no longer useful to Twitter, entire account deleted over fears he'll whip up more mayhem

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Re: won't be there

Just like the failed coup he will be right there with them ... in spirit. This time his body will by stuck in quarantine at Prestwick Airport.

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Re: At least Trump has finally conceded

I wasn't talking about being present at Biden's inauguration. I meant Trump's own fantasy of an inauguration that he had to admit will never happen because the coup klutz clan failed dismally to hold the Capitol Building.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Now they shut down his voice. Is that right?

No. He can still hold press conferences, rallies and stand on a soap box in the park and shout his delusions. What he cannot do is put stuff on my website or Twitter's.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

At least Trump has finally conceded

In his last tweet ever he said he would not be going to the inauguration.

Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off

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Two wrongs do not make a right: three lefts do

Out of sticky notes? How will everyone remember their new passwords?

Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'

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Re: Two bankers boasting

US division: We work more hours than you lot.

UK division: We make more money than you lot.

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: I can relate to that

A beginner did an excellent job of etching, drilling and soldering a one-off two sided PCB but did not understand why it did nothing until I mentioned that the holes do not conduct electricity by themselves.

I wasted half a day debugging a 2.5V circuit until I noticed the 5V version of a chip had been installed. Some helpful person had fixed an "out of stock" problem by calling the supplier. Apparently many customers did not mind which chip was supplied because the 2.5V chip was designed to work in 5V circuits.

I busted a few prototype PCB's before I noticed the big inductor for the switched mode power supply was very obviously not big at all. Someone had helpfully dealt with a late part by authorising a different one with the same inductance.