Troubleshooting (Patreon)

Authors Note: Ironically enough, this week's Randomly Mine is late due to Troubleshooting causing delays...

Normally, when I'm writing, I've got a point to make… it's not always a good point, but a point never the less.

On this occasion though, I've got some strong feelings on a vague target, and I'm hoping by putting something down here, that target can become clearer.

At the moment, I'm hosting Assetto Corsa, reinstalling Windows, trying Android Emulators and testing VR equipment.

The through-line in all of these is troubleshooting.

The process of whittling down what's possibly causing problems with your hardware, and in the age of Apps, Executables, Drivers, Updates, Modes, Administrations, Connections, Permissions, Subscriptions, Compatibility, Modability, and probably some other bullshit, there's a lot of things that can go wrong on modern hardware.

I'm not the worst with it.

But I'm not the best off either.

Most recently, my computer has begun to only launch on every other boot.

So, waking up in the morning now entails pressing the power button, having the computer turn on, sit at a black screen, shutting it down, and relaunching it to then be greeted by the Windows login.

This isn't about my Computer specifically though.

My wrath is against troubleshooting itself.

Because in circles like Emulation, Editing, Linux, or just regular Tech Forums, troubleshooting is spoken of casually.

Minimally.

"You might have to do some troubleshooting before running this game at optimal performance."

Whereas I now read sentences like that with "Troubleshooting" in BOLD, Italic, Underlined text.

Because…

It. Is. TIMECONSUMING.

Just my last video?

I spent two days TROUBLESHOOTING DaVinci Resolve until finally narrowing down a rendering pipeline that didn't generate constant artifacting at random points in the video.

I've gone morning to midnight trying to get games to work, hardware to work, software to work, and lord knows how often I've played tech support for friends running into just as many problems as I do... and what really slams my head on the desk is whenever looking up these issues online, there's always, always, a couple forum posts from a 5+ years ago, having the exact same problem.

My Dad will start yelling at somebody on the road for holding them up at the intersection for two seconds, and yet when recommending Emulators, Editors, Linux, etc, we speak of Troubleshooting like its less intrusive than that.

All the time, I see people who've spent more hours than I have on all of the above openly ask, "why aren't these things more popular?"

Best Case Scenario:
Because people don't want to spend all day troubleshooting their machines.

Worst Case Scenario:
Because people can'tspend all day troubleshooting their machines.

What should go without saying in both scenarios, is that a person shouldn't have to, yet I fear it's this implied expectation of having to do so that's impeding progress on almost everything involving technology.

Hosting multiplayer games and racing leagues in the last few years has really opened my eyes to this.

Yes, a complicated game like Assetto Corsa is "easy" to install when you've got a guide written by somebody (ME) who has whittled down anything that could potentially cause issues…

You've got all the steps listed.

1. Install Base Game
2. Download Content Manager
3. Apply Custom Shaders Patch
4. Mod in SOL or PURE
5. Drag & Drop Extra Content

Okay.

Each of those steps has 1000+ variables.

And all it takes is for one of those to go wrong.

My friend streaming these racing events, Ham. He had Windows Registry Errors preventing him from installing PURE.

Has he ever touched Windows Registry?

No.

Has he ever touched Window's permissions?

No.

Has he ever done anything to Windows since his Windows installation?

No.

But now there's only two things that can be done.

Troubleshoot all day, or give up on PURE.

He made the smart choice, and gave up on PURE.

I would've made the dumb one and picked the former, because this is the thing… some part of me enjoys troubleshooting.

I've spent all day fixing up an old game to run in its ideal condition, only to play it for ten minutes, and install another one, just to do it all over again.

There's satisfaction in problem solving, replicating bugs, narrowing down the list of technical suspects, finding the culprit, solving the problem, and forever knowing exactly how to start up a broken thing effortlessly for the future!

However… I think I've chased the dragon for too long, and my patience is starting to wear thin.

Currently, I'm booting up a computer that doesn't boot, with a music streamer that crashes every 20th song, on a Desktop that resets my microphone to 100% ear-rape, audio which goes into an editor that won't accept particular forms of audio, files that require a converter that doesn't accept certain parameters…

Then I sit down and write this entire article in two sessions with no obstructions.

And I just think…

This needs to be everything.

Games aren't developed, they're salvaged. Someone's idea gets implemented, and then spent six goddamn months ironing out every single little minor problem spawned from something as innocuous as a zip-line.

A web-app is coded in minutes, and broken in days by one update from Google that'd require extra days to fix.

An operating system with 40+ years of iteration, thousands of programmers, and billions of dollars in R&D will still be unable to rename files without crashing explorer.

A photo editor with 30+ years of iteration, hundreds of programmers, and millions of dollars in R&D will still be unable to load a photo as quickly as it did 30+ years ago with 300x the computing power.

I've written an article before about Software Being Shit, but what's really shit, is that troubleshooting is seen as the solution rather than the problem.

Now, a lot of this is out of necessity.

An emulator made by a handful of people in their spare time isn't going to be able to resolve every little bug under the sun, and will have to resort to saying "change X setting to fix Y" for the sake of their own sanity.

But we're in the midst of a war from Megacorps. Pressured into closed source software with fewer permissions for more money, and while we are fighting it via open source alternatives, reverse engineering, and professionally developed freeware, this war will never be won as long as Troubleshooting is omnipresent.

We need numbers, and we can't get them when telling everyone that a "solution" is actually just one step of potentially thousands. More importantly... even me, that kinda likes Troubleshooting, you know what I like more?

Games.

And I think everyone would love an environment where we spend time playing them or creating them, rather than fixing them.