The Right Tool for the Job

Recently I wrote about diagnosing a bad diagnostic tool and would like to expand on the proper use of tools. Last week I flew out to my boat to clean it up a bit and work on the engine. I needed to replace the impeller on the water pump which required removing a pin on the water pump housing. The easiest way to do that is with a hole-punch and a hammer. Unfortunately I didn't have a hammer on my boat and so I tried a number of other tools. I did have a hole punch and so I lightly hit it with a wrench, a screwdriver, and even a piece of wood. While I made some progress, none of what I tried was a good substitute for a hammer. Ultimately I drove to a local store and bought a small picture-hanging hammer. Only 3 whacks later and the pin came out nicely.

The whole time I was working on the engine, I kept thinking of the phrase, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat all your problems like nails." So what is the opposite of that phrase, when you have a bunch of other tools, but not a hammer? I'm not sure, but if you come up with something let me know.

This experience reminded me again of the importance of having the right tool for the job. With computers, this is very important. Anyone that has ever tried to work on Macintosh computers from the 1990's knows that the most important tool was a #8 Torx screwdriver. At the time you had to special order them but now you can find them at almost any store that sells tools.

While we all know the importance of hardware tools, there are a number of software tools that can make your life significantly easier as well. I remember one night trying to rebuild a corrupted database. It didn't have much data in it but the information it had was very important. To get the everything back, I looked at the raw data files using a hex editor. It allowed me to see the original data and write an extraction script to pull the information out in a human-readable format. Then I could rebuild the database and populate it with the correct information. Your typical editor or word processing software would have made the job significantly more difficult, if not impossible.

So how do you know if a better tool exists? Simple, just do a search on your favorite internet search engine and see if others have had similar problems. They will generally provide some ideas on what tools to use to solve them. That is how I solve car problems, boat problems, electrical problems, and even computer problems. Hopefully it works for you too.