Complexity, Analysis, and Ability

I spent the weekend in my parents' place back in I/O. For many years, they had a big old Sony TV which in its own day used to be a hot thing, but over time degraded in quality and ended up as a squeaky old box full of electronics beyond its best-before date. Recently, it got replaced by a new hot thing, a badass big flatscreen. So much for context.

Deplorably lacking a decent DVI or VGA socket, it still features a plethora of other input options, almost all of which immediately got hooked up with their counterpart output connectors from VCR, DVD, cable, and a satellite receiver, which in turn ended up connected to a hifi system as well.

Apart from bogging down the available cupboard space with remotes, this whole installation also captivated our attention due to some nasty analogue-style image disturbances and a humming background sound. Of course, PJS immediately and without any second thoughts by the S-family got recruited as chief bug-hunter in command. It turned out to be a whole-Saturday activity of attaching, detaching, and swapping of coax, SCART, and cinch cables, receivers, and input sockets, and ended with the nailing down of a very stupid issue, a crappily manufactured BNC connector.

The interesting thing, however, was a comment by CS. I'm still not completely sure about its truthfulness, but still it stunned me. What she did was to praise my ability to systematically go after the bug, instead of faltering in the face of overwhelming apparative complexity and aimlessly poking around in search of some elusive problem.

Could it be we (Computing Scientists) really learned something useful? Are we more able to analyse a complex component-based system even without prior experience? Now, that's what constitutes this weekend's central question.