Back in the days of punched paper tape, I spent a day on a program that always fell over in the same way. I worked out where the problem was, put the printout of code looked perfect. In desperation, I looked at the tape (reading the holes was always a challenge) and found a smear of butter in the appropriate place. The TTY used mechanical fingers to detect holes, but the computer used an optical sensor which looked through the butter and saw holes that weren't there. Of course we weren't supposed to eat in the computer room, but...
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Back in the days of punched paper tape, I spent a day on a program that always fell over in the same way. I worked out where the problem was, put the printout of code looked perfect. ...
In desperation, I looked at the tape (reading the holes was always a challenge) and found a smear of butter in the appropriate place. The TTY used mechanical fingers to detect holes, but the computer used an optical sensor which looked through the butter and saw holes that weren't there.
Of course we weren't supposed to eat in the computer room, but