https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/percussive_maintenance ftw

edit: I have to add, i just found out about the extent of the definition.

>make a malfunctioning device or person work.

Packing a punch is not only useful to fix things, but often the best way to get you an answer. Or as my control theory professor used to say:

If you want to know how an unknown system reacts, first thing you do is to hit it hard.

What he meant was that applying the Heaviside function to the inputs of a system to determine the step response [1] is one of the first things we should do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step_response

I remember that thinking from control theory classes, but I thought you use a Dirac delta as a hard shove.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_response

(Actually, our control classes told us to do both to get a basic view of a system.)

There is a German proverb about percussive human maintenance, literally translated to: slight hits on the back of the head increase the ability to think.

a hammer is my go to tool for anything thats stuck. a good whack usually get things going ;-)

I wish I could do that to my software sometimes. Just bang my computer to get it working.

In that case, you may enjoy https://github.com/ajalt/fuckitpy

Or its siblings, including https://github.com/mattdiamond/fuckitjs

It is cathartic, even if it doesn't work.

You can - in Javascript for example:

setTimeout(function() { ... setTimeout(function() { ... }, Math.random() 1000); }, Math.random() 1000);

// winning!

Proof for P==NP is somewhere 30 layers deep in the bowels of a low-traffic javascript-rendered site.

They are the real heroes! This is such an amazing example of getting a job done.

Makes me wonder how long the fix will last, though.

Maybe they just grew up with Windows 95 where switching off and on solved 99% of issues.