John Ringo's Live Free or Die starts with a nice explanation:

“It is said that in science the greatest changes come about when some researcher says "Hmmm. That's odd." The same can be said for relationships: "That's not my shade of lipstick . . ."—warfare: "That's an odd dust cloud . . ." Etc.”

--Fires in California: "That's a strange cloud..."

Not making it up, this is exactly what we thought when the Oakland Hills fire of 1991 started. Our confusion was short-lived, I'm sad to say.

Today at work: "What's that smell?" after a quick look around "There's a bit of smoke coming off that transformer." Bigger problem averted.

There is very little substitute for spending lots of time in your lab, so that you notice the tiny shifts in mechanical sounds that indicate a change in the health of an instrument.

Same thing for me. I was having brunch in Pacifica and when I headed back to San Francisco, I saw this weird cloud where it shouldn't be. It was an otherwise clear day and it was blowing backwards, towards the ocean, due to whatever the Northern California equivalent of a Santa Ana wind is.

I think they're the Diablo winds in the Bay area?

Unfortunately the principle does not hold up for software development. If people made discoveries every time they encountered some strange code, we'd have The Matrix running in no time.

You think that's air you're breathing now?

Software is “This could be better…”

Perhaps we did ;-)

Such a great series. Word is he's working on book 4, but motivation is low. Can't say I blame him, he has a large body of work...which is also part of the problem; too many projects.

Or: "How on earth could this code possibly work?"

Thats the worst. The moment the problem flips from "whats wrong with this code?" to "Why does this even work?" and you learn how little you really know.